


Try, Try and Try Again

by erikaelencia



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Byleth isn’t good at this whole immortality gig, Dimitri is a disaster bi pass it on, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Falconer!Claude, Immortal!Byleth, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Reincarnation, Someone get Seteth a coffee please, Soul memories are kinda sketchy ngl, This takes place about six hundred years after the main story, Those Who Slither in the Dark are stubborn, University Shenanigans, awkward romances, eventual dimiclaudeleth, get these kids some therapy geez, no beta we die like Glenn, very stubborn, we’ll get there I promise, why is tagging so hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21665962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erikaelencia/pseuds/erikaelencia
Summary: Power often comes with a price—Byleth Eisner, for all the good that she has done over the years, is no exception to this.Five hundred years after nearly everyone that Byleth has ever loved has left the mortal plane, Byleth awakens to find herself in a new conflict with the remnants of Agartha alongside the reincarnations of her former students and friends.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan, Manuela Casagranda/alcohol, Marianne von Edmund/Hilda Valentine Goneril, My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan, Sylvain Jose Gautier/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, other pairings to be added - Relationship
Comments: 102
Kudos: 464





	1. Chapter 1

(I)

Truly, there are very few people that could ever hate themselves the way that Byleth von Riegan hated herself, so wholly and so deeply. 

When she looked in a mirror she wanted to break it, when she felt at her too-smooth skin she wanted to dig her nails into it and drag it until it was as wrinkled as she knew it should be. 

Byleth took a  deep breath.  _ No, no,  _ that’s not what  _ he  _ needs to see right now. 

Her hand grows tighter around his hand instead of her throat and she brings it to her lips, tasting the skin like a woman starved, moving down his wrist, desperate to feel that ever slowing pulse.

“By,” he says, but she refuses to look up. She can’t do it, she can’t watch this. She did it once, she’s done it twice, but this… this is different. There is no going back now. There is no Divine Pulse to turn back the clock, give her just a few more seconds of  _ him  _ without making her watch him drift off over and over again _. _

His touch, his voice, his laugh, his smile, his frown, his ever present incessant need to know even more of her every secret when he already knew it all—she  _ needs  _ more of it all but deep inside, she knows that she is running out. 

The definition of the word  _ divine _ is incorrect. Immortality is a sham. Power is worthless. 

She would gladly give it all up for him. No one would even have to ask her. She would take him any way she could have him—young and strong, wrinkled and weak. Any way at all. 

She just—

“ _ Byleth. _ ” His arm was stronger than usual, or maybe it was that her grip has finally slackened. He frees his fingers from her arm, takes her chin and brings her closer to him. She follows, as she always does. 

She will always follow Claude. 

“Come now,” he says as she finally meets those gemstone green eyes. They haven’t dulled, even with age. “Don’t look away like that, my love. Let me be a little selfish here, please?”

Byleth nods and there are tears at her eyes, betraying her. Claude doesn’t need to see those either. She lets him pull her into the bed with him and for a moment, it is easy to pretend that everything is okay. 

Fuck it, no it isn’t. Her body has betrayed her yet again, there is no point in hiding it anymore. She collapses onto his chest, hates that his heartbeat isn’t as steady in her ear as it always is as her tears began to drench the silk of his shirt. 

Byleth is twenty-one and her first friend, her first love, her first and only husband is eighty-three. 

She lifts her head, holds back a sob. “Please don’t leave me,” she mumbles, her voice hardly functional. She is hardly functional, she still  _ needs  _ him. 

But didn’t she need them too? Her father, her friends—Lorenz, Lysithea, Marianne, Hilda and more—she needed them. However, that didn’t matter. 

Her need for them didn’t make them any less dead. 

A cough wrecks his chest as the sob wrecks hers. “Hey,” he whispers, painful to them both. “Do you remember that day, sixty years ago?”

She nods. Sixty years ago, when they first confessed their love to each other. She remembered well. 

_ I love you with everything that I am.  _

“I said I’d come back to you, didn’t I?”

“You can’t come back from the dead.”

“They said I couldn’t open trade and bring down the barriers between Fódlan and Almyra either, but here we are now.”

There is something mischievous in that tired voice and unbidden, Byleth’s lips quirk up. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Claude.”

Claude smiles back and if Byleth had a beating heart, it would have stuttered, even after all these years. “I would never.”

There is a beat of silence, but Byleth can hear a thousand words.  _ I love you. Thank you. You are my everything.  _

“Byleth,” he breathes and she knows that they don’t have long. “Smile for me? One more time, for the road.”

Byleth looks at his face, the face that she has woken to every single day for sixty years. The face that she has seen grow and change, become older and older even as she stayed the same. She looks at the smile that had warmed her cold, cold corpse-self and taught her how to feel and how to love. 

She thinks of all the happy times and the laughter, all of the days spent with friends and family, all the lazy mornings in bed and all the nights scheming at the chalkboard. 

Byleth smiles, one more time, just for him, and presses a kiss to his chapped lips. One more for the road. 

“You spoil me…” Byleth shakes her head. It’s the opposite. She is so, so spoiled. 

Byleth closes her eyes against his forehead for what feels like too short of an eternity. She barely hears what slips out of his mouth next. 

“Until we meet again, my friend.”

_ Byleth von Riegan is twenty-one, and her husband was eighty-three.  _

* * *

Byleth develops a routine. Sleep for fifty or a hundred years, say hi to Flayn and Seteth, spit on Rhea’s grave, look for Claude, spit on Rhea’s grave again for good measure, then sneak back into the Holy Tomb and go back to sleep when she gets sick of being lonely again. 

_ Oh come on,  _ says the imaginary Sothis in her head.  _ I give you all this power and  _ this  _ is what you decide to do with it?! _

Well, yes. Constant shaming from the suspiciously Sothis-like voice in her head or not, it was hard to find the motivation to do anything important anymore. 

She was cold and she was tired. It was like her adolescence all over again. 

Oh, sure, it wasn’t too awful. She usually stayed awake for about a year at a time, maybe more. She learned about the world, saw how it changed. She saw a few familiar faces here and there—she thinks she may have seen the gatekeeper from Garreg Mach twice now, but that may have been wishful thinking. 

She hasn’t seen any of her former students. 

Well, except Flayn of course, but that was different. She felt guilty for all the times that she has left Flayn and Seteth, even though they were supposed to be in this whole immortality business together, but they understood. 

“When my first wife died,” Seteth admitted once over wine, “I slept for fifty years. Flayn slept for twice that. Grief is an awful thing and for beings like us, it makes it all too easy to simply never get up again.”

Byleth doesn’t bother asking about his second wife—she hadn’t stayed awake long enough to bear witness to that particular tragedy. She doesn’t need to think about her. She doesn’t need to add another fifty years to her next grief-sleep. 

It isn’t that Byleth particularly dislikes being awake. On the contrary, she  _ loves  _ being awake. She’s endlessly fascinated by the new technologies that humanity comes up with, puzzled by fashion, drawn in by the arts—these little things that remind her that she is still alive. 

She likes wandering around, she likes meeting new people. 

That isn’t the problem. 

The problem is both who she sees and who she does not see. 

She sees the crest of Goneril on the logo of a fashion brand and she sees Hilda, her eye-catchingly pink hair tied back, sewing needles scattered about a table and odd knickknacks coming together to form something beautiful. 

On a whim, Byleth bought a brooch from the brand—bless Seteth and his prudent gathering of funds over the years. She pins it to her new jacket and looks in the mirror. Hilda is standing behind her, considering, her eyebrows delicately scrunched up. Then her lips quirk up and her eyes look bright—clearly, the brooch suits Byleth. 

Byleth looks behind her. 

There is no one there.

A man with purple ( _ is it? _ ) hair is giving a speech at a grand dinner. He talks of new tax policies and labor laws with a familiar passion and when he finishes, Byleth’s proud applause is amongst the loudest, at first.

( _ His name is not Lorenz. _ )

She is trying a new dish at a small, quiet cafe. It is delicious and hearty and Byleth doesn’t feel as though the seats across from her are empty. 

Raphael is there, sunshine grin and all—she can practically see the mess around his plate. It was a very good meal, with very good company. Ignatz is sitting next to him, facing the window, the set of his features fond. The sun is setting and there are birds flying through the sky—she can’t see his sketch pad, but she imagines that those birds are flying onto the pages, guided by Ignatz’ expert hand.

Byleth stands up, finished. Belatedly, she realizes that the table is as empty as her plate is. 

She smiles and leaves a generous tip before leaving to book a train ticket to Garreg Mach. 

Seventy-five years after that, Byleth has to force herself to look at the girl who is trying to out-shoot her with the world’s newest tool of war. So bright and competitive, but her eyes were the wrong color. She’d never met Byleth’s father. The face wasn’t even right at all. 

“Just watch and learn,” the girl boasts. Byleth does, wrenches her eyes open, tries to see the living, breathing person and not the battle-bloodied corpse. 

Being awake, Byleth decides, is hard. She’s being haunted—haunted by her love and theirs. By Claude’s empty promises, by her blasted dependency and her inability to let go. 

It’s funny, she never sees him the way she sees the others. No, her husband’s ghost is far, far more dangerous than that. 

In the mornings, Byleth feels his chest underneath her instead of the plush pillows. When she is cold she does not truly feel it, as if his arm is around her once more, warming her, like the damned human furnace he is. 

Her imaginary Claude is a constant companion, not quite as obvious as the others, but he never really leaves the way they do either. 

She knew what he was. A terrifying coping mechanism. 

She knew she should stop, try to stop feeling him, stop longing like this—he promised. He promised that he’d return to her, in the flesh. 

She can’t just...drive herself insane like this. There has to be something left of her when she finally finds him again. 

It would be disappointing, wouldn’t it? If, when they finally see each other again, she’s so far gone that she can’t tease him. Shake her head at his schemes. Hold a conversation. 

She’s glad that photographs had taken an extra hundred years to come into practice. That yearbooks hadn’t had the time to become fashionable during her time at the monastery. 

She’d probably never leave the tomb at all, if she had something like that. 

Flayn likes to tell her that she’s stronger than that, that she’s wrong, but then again—Flayn often has trouble understanding Byleth. 

After all, Flayn, worldly though she may be, doesn’t quite understand why Byleth hates Rhea as she does, why Byleth cannot simply leave the dead woman to be, well,  _ dead _ . 

But Byleth cannot blame her—Seteth doesn’t quite get it either. It’s an unspoken secret of theirs, that they all know exactly who has been crushing that gravestone every hundred years or so. 

In her defense, they  _ really  _ shouldn’t have buried the woman in the same cemetery as her father. That was just  _ asking  _ for trouble. 

“Byleth,” Seteth chides, breaking her out of her reverie. “Glaring at a statue will not do you any good. We are here to immerse ourselves in  _ culture _ , not old grudges.”

Museums were always a mixed bag for Byleth, what with her tenuous connection to the present as the past constantly threatened to consume her. But Flayn liked them more than any immortal being ought to, which meant Seteth was fond of them too and Byleth adored the only two people left in her life far too much to ever say no to something so insignificant as an outing to one here or there. 

“It’s been four-hundred years,” Byleth grumbles. “ _ Why  _ is she still culture?”

She recognized this statue, this flawless depiction of Saint Seiros. If she looked carefully enough, she could see the little lines scratched into it—Claude’s work. He’d been seventeen and messing with Seteth’s obsessive need to maintain every statue in the monastery. 

“Four hundred years is not all that long,” Flayn commented. “But Father is correct, Byleth. Come, some of…  _ his  _ works are on display.”

Ah. So that was what this was. 

Byleth shrugged and took the other woman’s proffered hand. Fair enough. 

They stroll through the exhibits idly, as though they have all the time in the world. Byleth recognizes some of the pieces and artifacts, takes a moment to admire a portrait of Marianne on her horse, Dorte. It was a nice name for a horse—Byleth has named many a horse Dorte over the years. She is now on Dorte the Sixth. 

Flayn stops at a portrait entitled  _ Sainted _ , painted so delicately, so lovingly, that it makes Byleth’s heart hurt. The girl in the portrait hasn’t changed at all, she thinks, so warm and so strong. There are tears in her eyes as she stared at her reflection through the eyes of someone who loved her so. 

Byleth pulls Seteth away with her, much to his protests. Flayn needed the space. Byleth’s imaginary Claude is shaking his head, she feels, chuckling. His breath ghosts over her ears as she marches forward-  _ some things never change, do they? _

_ Shut up,  _ Byleth thinks half-heartedly, he can haunt her later. She needs to look well-adjusted for a bit longer. Claude’s specter is a guilty pleasure that she cannot indulge in right now, thank you. 

“ _ Byleth, _ ” Seteth hisses sharply and belatedly, she realizes she said it out loud. Whoops. Maybe she ought to go take a nap. 

“Sorry,” she says half-heartedly. “Just...give her a moment.”

Seteth sighed but nodded, old and tired. “We have far too many of those.”

Byleth shrugged. He had a point.

* * *

That was how most of her waking days went—sad, worldly, reminiscing. She’d gotten used to it, started to expect it. 

She shouldn’t have become so complacent. 

* * *

  
  


The first thing she noticed when she awoke next was that she was not on the tomb. The room’s walls were eery and black, but it was well-lit. 

The second was that she could not move. Her wrists were tied down, her ankles tethered. Her muscles did not have the strength to break free, not yet. 

She was lying on some kind of hard surface, a table, perhaps? She didn’t know. It was hard to tell. She was so disoriented. 

Her magic  _ is  _ there, she knew, but it was out of reach. It doesn’t respond, no matter how desperately she claws at it from the inside. 

Byleth was helpless. She was cold. She, for the first time in far too many years of life, was  _ scared _ . 

There were voices, movement around her. She couldn’t process any of it, her senses still clouded with what must have been a century or so of sleep. 

Something pricked her shoulder and she could feel the poison stretching through her veins. Her eyes grew heavy again. 

Yes.  _ Sleep _ . Her favorite esca—

* * *

Ashe doesn’t know how he got into this situation, staring at this ( _ familiar? _ ) woman with bright green hair, tied down to a table in a room of vials and needles and so obviously  _ hurt  _ that it hurt him to look at her. 

Well, no, that’s not true. He knows  _ exactly  _ how he got into this situation. 

It all started when he received a scholarship to attend his dream school, the incredibly prestigious Garreg Mach University, for food science. He loved the subject and better yet, it was a major that lead to jobs that  _ paid well _ without any debts or strings attached. 

Which meant that he could finally afford to feed his siblings  _ honestly. _ No more pick-pocketing, no more scams or other forms of deceit that made him want to be sick. 

But really, what else could he have done? A minor in charge of two young children, in a cruel orphanage system—he was too old to be adopted and his siblings, bless their hearts, rejected any family that didn’t want him too. When he finally got kicked out, they went too, even if he didn’t want that for them. 

So he did his best, took multiple jobs at a time, studied at an unreputable high school, stole and tricked when he couldn’t afford to keep food on the table or pay their shoddy apartment’s rent on time. 

It wasn’t like some random, kind, wealthy human being was ever going to show up and save him from this nightmare, parent him and his siblings, tell him it was going to be okay, that he could just go to school and be  _ normal _ , after all. 

Knights in shining armor are a children’s story. Nothing more. 

( _ That’s not true, not at all, what about Lonato, your frie— _ )

Of course, all that hardly allowed for him to have anything resembling a social life—no friends, no one to really rely on. It was terrible and lonely, but it was his lot in life. At least he had his siblings, he couldn’t really complain. 

When he first stepped into Garreg Mach University, he had been alone. Alone and small in a too-big place, shy and trying to be friendly, but it was hard. Building up the nerve to talk to people, to smile at people, was hard. 

He wouldn’t be making many friends here, it seemed. 

But then, while he was standing in the dining hall ( _ so, so familiar),  _ looking for an empty seat, he caught someone’s eye. Awkwardly, he was about to look away, but then… then that person smiled and began to wave him over! Ashe pointed to himself in wonder and the other boy merely smiled wider and nodded. 

His name was Dimitri A. Blaiddyd, Ashe later finds out. He only has one eye ( _ no one dares ask why _ ) and he’s a pre-law student with a concentration in social justice and business. A seemingly untouchable corporate heir. He has lots of friends—Felix and Sylvain. Dedue, Ingrid, Mercedes and Annette. And him. Ashe. 

They were his friends too, somehow. And goddess, did that feel good. Right. As though he was waiting for these people all his life ( _ he was _ ). 

Their banter was music to his ears, their outings and lunches his own personal slice of heaven. He felt as though he had missed them with everything in him, even if he had only just met them. Maybe it had been too early to say that he loved them back then, in the beginning, but now—three years in?

He knows he does.

Ashe is so lucky.

Well, mostly. Not right now. Really,  _ really _ not lucky right now.

Oh, right. His current situation. 

So while it should be said that Ashe loves Dimitri, his dear friend, with all of his heart and soul, he has some  _ serious  _ qualms with Dimitri’s taste in men. 

Well, it’s not that Claude’s a bad person or anything, and Ashe doesn’t entirely fault him for not noticing Dimitri’s three year old crush either, but that’s not the point. 

The point is that Claude von Riegan is a  _ magnet _ for trouble. Too curious for his own damn good, he’s heard Dimitri say fondly over the years. Felix likes to clarify that with a snort— _ that man is a snake that sticks his head everywhere except where it belongs.  _ Ashe can’t say that either of them are really wrong, although he’s starting to lean towards Felix’s assessment a little bit more. 

After all, it takes a special kind of person to discover the existence of magic by reading between the lines in a few history books, then uncover the existence of a secret evil organization of magic users,  _ somehow _ , then decide,  _ for whatever goddamn reason _ , to  _ pursue  _ them. 

But then again, he’s the one currently investigating said evil organization’s base, so he really isn’t one to talk. 

It was supposed to be quick—in and out. Get a feel for the place. Don’t be seen. Ashe was good at that, too many years of being a thief on the streets to make him anything less than flawless in the art of stealth. 

This...this definitely put a wrench in that plan. After all, it would be kinda hard to get out of here in one piece while carrying another person. 

But he couldn’t just leave her here, could he? No, of course not. He may not believe in knights anymore, but that doesn’t mean that he can just  _ leave  _ someone to their fate like this, to be tortured or harmed at someone else’s sadistic leisure. 

For all that Ashe has been forced to do horrible things for the sake of his siblings’ survival, he has never forgotten the difference between right and wrong. 

This is risky, he thought as he worked to undo the bindings keeping the not-so-stranger in place. He’d knocked out a guard to get into this important-looking room—he’d heard someone speaking about a prisoner and figured that it was worth checking out. Even if he couldn’t break them out now, someone who was being held by these people probably a) doesn’t agree with their ethics and b) has some decent information about what’s going on here. 

_ Prisoner  _ and  _ human experiment  _ are two terms that should never be found in the same context. 

He doesn’t have much time. This would be much easier if she was awake, but then again, the professor has always been something of a heavy sleeper. He remembers this one time when he’d been in the library late at night, looking up a proof on aerodynamics to help him understand some of the material covered in Professor Hanneman’s last archery seminar. He’d found her at one of the tables, her head resting on a thick tome in such a way that would clearly leave her groaning with pain in the morning—he would know. It had taken him a few minutes to actually wake her up, he remembers fondly. 

Ashe falters. When had that happened? He was in the library late at night often enough, that part of the memory (fantasy?) was realistic, but Professor Hanneman taught genetics, not archery. More than that, he was quite certain that he hadn’t had any memories like that five minutes ago either. 

Odd. 

Professor?

_ Odd.  _

Finally managing to free the woman, Ashe belatedly remembered that he had an earpiece. 

“ _ Ashe? Is everything alright?” _

Sylvain and Felix are waiting outside in case he needs backup, along with a timid girl named Marianne who is quite capable with magic and a sniper, like Ashe himself apparently is these days, Ignatz. Claude’s people.

“For now,” Ashe responds. “I may or may not be carrying an unconscious woman that I found strapped to some kind of lab-experiment table, so that’s subject to change.”

“ _ Oh, shit. Can you give me an approximate location? Wait.”  _ There’s a pause. “ _ Is she hot? _ ”

Ashe barely resists the urge to sigh. Loudly. Ah, Sylvain. Such a good person. Such an asshole.  _ What a man _ . “Three levels down. Um, west of the main entrance? I think?”

Ashe can vaguely hear Felix saying something harsh on the other end of the line. “ _ What? No, I am being serious! Geez, have some faith, dude. Ashe, do you think you need that backup yet? _ ”

Ashe considered it. Ever since Dimitri decided to get involved in this whole mess after seeing some obviously magic-induced injuries on Claude (and then refusing to tell anyone how he actually  _ knew  _ that they were from magic, goddess damnit), a few of them had taken up the study of magic themselves. Felix and Sylvain were especially gifted, whilst also being excellent front line fighters. That made them pretty suited towards charging in and causing as much damage as possible so that Ashe could make a decent escape in the chaos before running out themselves. 

Ashe shook his head. “No, not yet. It’s too risky. I’ll call you guys when I’m on the second level.”

“ _ If you’re sure. _ ” The concern warmed Ashe’s heart. “ _ Call us immediately if something changes, okay?” _

“Of course.”

The woman was light. Too light. Probably malnourished—he could hardly imagine someone with her appetite being malnourished, but—

Oh, there he went again. Goddess, this was weird. 

The hallways were clear, thankfully—they seemed to have a skeleton crew manning this place. That suited him just fine. Light though this woman was, he didn’t think that he’d be able to do a very good job of running with her on his back. He’d probably have to put her down and see how well his marksmanship held up against actual humans, which...didn’t bother him as much as it should. 

( _ You’re a soldier, now. Yes, it hurts and yes, it’s scary, but you must do what you must do. You don’t have to take pleasure in surviving your enemies. _ )

He didn’t take any pleasure in the idea of killing people, and he stoutly refused to think about the people they could leave behind, but he also couldn’t say that he would really hesitate when defending himself in a nest of those who thought that  _ human experimentation  _ was even remotely okay. 

Turn here. Right, left. Duck behind that statue, don’t get caught. Right, there—

“Ashe?”

Ashe’s eyes widened. She was awake! “You’re —I’m sorry, how do you know my name?”

Silently, Ashe curses at himself. Too loud. There’s a bathroom in this hallway, he remembers. 

He presses a finger to his lips, then quickens his pace until he can finally set her down in the room and lock the door. 

The woman stares at him. There is a mixture of bewilderment, hope, disappointment and fear in her eyes, and something else that he cannot quite place. “Do you not remember?”

Her voice is raspy from disuse and her skin is unnaturally pale. “Ah,” Ashe says, uncertain of how to actually reply. “You seem...familiar, somehow? But no, not really.”

“Oh,” she says simply. Ashe feels worse than he would have if he had accidentally kicked a puppy. “Where are we? Why are you here?”

“Um, that’s kind of a long story. I was hoping you would know more about this place, actually.”

The woman sighs, rubbing her forehead in consternation. “I don’t know. I’ve been asleep for too long—this isn’t where I went to sleep, either.”

Oh! She was kidnapped. “Oh, I see.” Could she just be a normal, uninvolved person? 

She gives him a flat stare, as if telling him that he could not possibly actually  _ see.  _ Okay, fair enough.

“Where are we?” she asks again.

“We’re in an underground base, for um...evil people. I was just trying to gather information, but then I found you here and I couldn’t just leave you there.”

For some reason, the explanation brings a small smile to the woman’s lips. Warm and soft, comforting. Why is he so comforted? “You have a knight’s heart.”

Ashe looks away and tries to ignore the stubborn feeling of pride at the comment. “Can you walk?” he asks instead.

The woman stands up, nodding. She flexes her arm, a magic circle appearing in her hand before flickering and disappearing. 

“You have magic?” Ashe asks, more surprised than he feels he ought to be. 

“It’s all I have.”

Ashe winces. “Um. Right. Sorry. Um, I forgot to ask earlier but, what is your name?”

“Byleth,” she says simply.  _ Professor Byleth Eisner. _

Byleth looks up at him sharply. Oh, he had said that out loud…

“Um,” he says intelligently. “I don’t know how I know that. Sorry.”

She nods in response, the motion somehow heavy. Regardless, it was definitely easier to get out of here now that Byleth was awake. They moved through the halls quickly enough, ducking to avoid sentries and knocking out any that couldn’t be avoided entirely. 

Byleth’s magic was something else entirely, far more refined than the stuff that even Mercedes and Annette could deal out with their meager month of training and incredible natural aptitude. 

Actually,  _ Byleth _ was something else entirely. She was a natural leader, he felt, and it was only too easy to fall into step with her commands.  _ Familiar.  _

Goddess, why is this all so familiar? 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

(II)

  
  


_ Oh, Fish. _

Byleth  _ really  _ hates it when Claude is right sometimes. Really. She hates it when he’s right about when she’s being too stubborn for her own good, hates it when he’s right about what is and is not a lost cause. 

She  _ especially  _ hates it when he’s right about Those Who Slither in the Dark. 

_ Well, it looks like we’ve purged them from Fódlan and Almyra alright,  _ she recalls him saying at a strategy meeting one night, wiser and greyer,  _ but somehow, I doubt that that’s all of them. As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think that we  _ can _ get rid of every Agarthan settlement within our lifetime. _

It made sense. The Agarthan society had existed for hundreds of years before the Golden Deer began their crusade—they had  _ plenty  _ of time to spread like the infestation they were. Shamir had even uncovered a few of their bases in Almyra, of all places. 

Ultimately, there were certain regions that they just could not enter and search with any degree of thoroughness without basically declaring war. The political climate was too unstable and the chance of civilian casualties was too great. 

After the end of what should have been her natural lifespan, Byleth had been in the perfect position to actually  _ do  _ something about that. Supposedly dead, the former queen of the United Nations of Almyra and Fódlan should have been able to move against them with ease. 

But as much as it shamed her to admit this, for the first few decades after her loved ones were all gone, she just… didn’t care anymore, so to speak. 

Byleth, unfortunately, had this  _ wonderful  _ habit of dealing with grief by smothering it with near-total apathy. Minimization of pain. If she stopped caring about everything around her minus a few people here and there, then nothing else can possibly hurt her. 

It was how she managed to teach her classes after her father had died, how she could move on with the war effort after watching her own students die, sometimes by her own hand.

It had been easy, too easy. The Agarthans couldn’t hurt anyone that mattered anymore, no? The dead were dead and Seteth and Flayn would be fine so long as they stayed within the borders of Fódlan and Almyra. Byleth didn’t need to do anymore. She could just sleep now. 

Right? Right. Byleth is the  _ queen _ of healthy coping mechanisms.

Then, by the time that she finally got around to lifting her safety blanket of numbness, to thinking about all the innocents that were still in danger, she found that she didn’t have the energy to do anything about it. She barely managed to go a year before taking another century-long depression nap these days—how on earth was she supposed to pull herself together enough to undertake a task like this one?

Excuses, excuses. That’s all it was. Byleth was ashamed to admit it, but she really has let herself go since her glory days. 

And now it was all coming back to bite her in the ass. 

The clearer her mind became, the more she recognized the architecture of the building she and Ashe were currently attempting to escape. It was obviously Agarthan, from the odd energy pulses running through the walls to the dark, smooth material unique to their civilization. Even the shapes common in the design were familiar. 

Emotions that Byleth had thought that had she long since buried—  _ shame, fear, hope, disappointment _ —crashed over her very being, clashing with the cloudy sleepiness that she knew would last at least a few more days. 

Hope that she will finally be able to see  _ them, him _ , again. Disappointment, at the possibility that no one will remember everything that they had gone through together, all the good times and the bad. Fear that they will see her and look at her with not even a spark of recognition in their eyes. 

Shame—her negligence has dragged everyone back into a battle that she could have easily protected them from, has ruined their innocence once again, has pulled them into danger that they should never have encountered. 

They deserve better. 

Byleth has no doubt that they can handle themselves, of course. Take her current companion, for example. 

She had recruited Ashe into the Golden Deer about a month before Edelgard had initially declared war on the Church of Seiros. He’d taken to assassin training with ease, was a natural with the bow and more than halfway-decent with a dagger—something that obviously hasn’t changed from one life to the next. Definitely her first choice for a reconnaissance mission. 

After the war, she had awarded him with official knighthood and the lands that his adoptive father had once cared for, as well as a few more regions once he had gotten good enough with the politics of it all. His kind heart and intrinsic fairness ensured a prosperous rule and a happy people, as she and Claude had expected.

Of course, this also meant that Ashe had worked together with the crown quite often. Her old student became a dear friend to her over the years and it  _ hurt _ that he could barely remember her. 

That he acted as though he didn’t even know her. 

But perhaps what hurt most was that he remembered  _ some  _ things. He remembered her name, looked at her as though he knew her at one point but couldn’t quite place her face anymore. 

It was as though he was there, but just out of reach. No matter how much she strained to catch hold of his hand, she would never be able to get her old friend back. 

She wants to go back to sleep again. 

If seeing Ashe like this hurt her this badly, then what about those she was even closer to? Hilda, who had remained a dear friend for her entire lifetime, who had visited for months at a time? Lorenz, the long-suffering chief adviser to her and Claude’s reign? Raphael, who brought everyone together for meals at his inn every so often? The list could go on and on—Byleth didn’t even want to think about it anymore. 

Let’s not even begin to consider how crushed Byleth would be if  _ Claude  _ couldn't remember her anymore. 

Alarms began to go off as Byleth and Ashe neared the exit. It would only take a few seconds for them to be surrounded—they had to make their escape  _ fast.  _ Byleth didn’t have any explosive spells in her repertoire, but she would have to make do. 

“Get out of here,” Byleth muttered to her companion. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

“But—“

“ _ Go.” _

Ashe was hesitant to leave her at first, but another pointed look had him running towards the exit. Just a two minute jog away. 

Guards were running towards them already. They were so close… Byleth took a deep breath, gathered what she could of her magic. She stopped, let them get a bit further, and—

“ _ Bolganone. _ ”

The scent of burning flesh and shocked screams filled the air. 

Whatever they’d done to Byleth, it had clearly repressed most of her magic. That being said, Byleth is also a six hundred year old mage who has had  _ plenty  _ of time to build up her reserves, so her “repressed” state was less “completely useless” and more along the lines of “moderately experienced, kinda rusty”. 

Byleth turned and ran into the light. 

* * *

Marianne. Ignatz. Sylvain. Felix. 

Oh, how Byleth’s still-heart weighed down her chest. Why couldn’t it just be a crest stone in there, why did she have to feel anything at all anymore?

It wasn’t fair. 

They were all waiting outside with Ashe, tense and ready to go. Sylvain was in the driver’s seat of some kind of vehicle, perhaps an upgraded version of the cars that had started coming into fashion when she last woke? 

It didn’t matter.

“They won’t be distracted for long,” Byleth warned the group. 

Felix nodded, eyes sharp and wary. “Of course not. Let’s go.”

Felix hadn’t visited them often, in her last life. He’d become a mercenary after the war had ended, too used to running away from his feelings and, she suspected, unwilling to serve a country that should never have been ruled by Claude and Byleth. 

She’d only seen him five times between the end of the war and his death. He’d only been about forty years old at the time. Sylvain hadn’t lasted much longer than his best friend, maybe a few days—Byleth had never understood him more than she did now. 

“Hurry up!” 

Right. Now isn’t the time to be reminiscing. Byleth climbed into the car, seated beside Marianne and trying her best to avoid brushing against the girl, to not remember the feeling of a soft, delicate hand against her skin as mumbles of healing spells filled the space around them. Tried not to remember watching that same hand warmly running along the side of a horse, that loving smile… 

Oh,  _ Fish _ . Why did she have to wake up? Truly, nothing that the Agarthans could have done to her compared to  _ this  _ torture. 

The ride was bumpy, the car was clearly going too fast for this road but it wasn’t like they had much of a choice. Sylvain glanced back at her, lips quirking up into that familiar, shallow smirk that she had seen so often before they had become friends. 

“Y’know, this  _ really _ isn’t how I would’ve liked our first ride together to go. I promise I’m not usually this bad of a driver.”

Byleth felt a whimper rising up in her throat. No, now isn’t the time for a breakdown. Instead, she squashed it under her tried and true stoic facade, raising an eyebrow at the flirtation. 

It wasn’t that Sylvain had ever stopped flirting with her per se, even after their issues concerning crests and their respective upbringings had finally been resolved—but over the years it became something of a joke between them. Sylvain’s flirtations had been hardly serious anymore—always over the top with laughter dancing in his eyes. Byleth’s responses had a similar flair to them— _ oh, what would my husband think if he saw us now? _

This wasn’t like that. This was serious and this was wrong. 

“Now is  _ not  _ the time for this, you idiot,” Felix hissed from the seat next to Sylvain. 

“Felix is right,” said Ignatz, drawing her attention to the quiet man. Did he paint in this lifetime? What did his style look like now? Was it the same, or was it just as she remembered it to be, so lifelike and yet somehow otherworldly? “Please excuse his rudeness, miss. He doesn’t mean any harm.”

_ Miss.  _

“Yes, he’s just...like this,” Ashe added awkwardly. “Everyone, this is Byleth. She’s the person I said I’d found in the base.”

Byleth nodded. “Thank you for the rescue.” Her voice fell flat on her own ears, hardly convincing. She wished she could feel more thankful. 

“No problem, but,” Sylvain began, his eyes on the road again. “Somehow, I doubt they just captured you for your good looks.”

Ashe opened his mouth to respond in her stead, clearly trying to avoid putting too much pressure on her in her seemingly delicate state, but Byleth beat him to the chase. “I have some history with these people,” Byleth admitted, ignoring the puzzled look Ashe gave her. She hadn’t known who had taken her when he originally asked. 

“Then you must have information on them,” said Felix, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. Byleth nodded, tried not to feel hurt. He had no reason to trust her. 

“I think we should discuss this later,” Marianne spoke up, her soft voice startling Byleth. “After all… you’ve only just woken up, right? This must be very disorienting…”

Byleth nodded. How long had it been since she had last experienced such concern? 

“Right. Let’s just focus on getting back to the city for now.”

Sylvain was ruthlessly efficient in losing any suspicious black vehicles that dared to follow them. There was one that had come dangerously close, but a quick lightning bolt to their tires from Marianne had taken care of that quite well. 

Before she knew it, they were at Garreg Mach Monastery, now Garreg Mach University. The conversion had happened some two hundred years ago, sponsored by Seteth. She had been the one to push for it herself—the church was hardly influential enough anymore to warrant having so much land all to itself and Byleth had always been passionate about education. 

Bustling with students and faculty, Garreg Mach had never looked better. There were new buildings to support a diverse cast of majors and a few graduate schools, much to Byleth’s delight.

She couldn’t wait to explore it all. 

“You are oddly familiar,” Felix noted as Byleth took lead of their little group, heading to where she knew the expanded dormitories would be. “—and it seems like you know your way around this place. Are you a student here?”

Byleth shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“Really?” asked Ignatz. “But… I could have sworn that I’ve seen you here before.”

Ashe nodded. “In the library, I think?”

Byleth schooled her expression with resolution. “I’ve been asleep for a very long time. I don’t think you’ve been here long enough to have seen me.”

“I might have,” returned Sylvain. “I’m in the grad school and you look pretty young. When was the last time you were here?”

Byleth frowned momentarily. “What year is it?”

“1790.”

Huh, that’s actually… not that long after she had last been awake. Only forty years. “You definitely haven’t, in that case.”

“Were you in...a coma?” asked Marianne with all of her trademark hesitance. Byleth nodded. Something like that. “Oh, then you shouldn’t be moving around so much! Your muscles and nerves probably aren’t in the best condition…”

Felix snorted. “Please. If she’d been in a coma then she wouldn’t be able to walk right now at all.”

Byleth gave him a look. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have enough time to think of a good cover story. “It was a magical coma.”

“A magical coma,” Felix repeated drily. Byleth nodded with the utmost seriousness. 

“Well,” Ashe began sheepishly, “—it really isn’t like any of us know enough about this type of thing to be able to refute that.” Felix shrugged in what Byleth assumed was agreement. 

Conversation continued like that for the next few minutes, Byleth doing her best to avoid saying anything too important or unbelievable. She knew Ashe at least wasn’t buying it, since she had known his name before he had ever uttered it to her, but he hadn’t brought it up yet so she was safe for now. 

They walked past the dorms to what had to be a luxury apartment building just off campus grounds. Parking at the university was a good call—the campus was just convoluted enough to make it easy to lose just about anyone if they had somehow been followed. 

Felix unlocked a door on the fifth floor and—

* * *

“—anything about her. Prisoner or not, we could just as easily be allowing the enemy into our base of operations as we could be welcoming a new ally.”

Byleth’s knees began to buckle. 

“While I understand your caution, I must implore you to trust me this time.” Is...is that who she thinks it is? Oh,  _ he  _ was bad enough, but she certainly hadn’t been prepared to have to mourn someone for the  _ third time.  _ “Please—“

_ Don’t say it. No, say it. Fuck, she can’t…  _

“—Claude.”

Numbly, Byleth followed the others into a simply, but elegantly decorated room where the two men were arguing. Someone said something, greetings were exchanged—none of it really registered to her ears. 

Memories did him no justice. Oh, how she had missed the gemstone-green sparkle of his eyes, the healthy tan to the skin that had been far too pale when she had last seen it. Had his jawline always been so sharp? Yes, yes, it had been—her lips can still remember its shape from all the times that she had kissed her way along it, all the way down to his neck. 

His voice was music to her ears, whether he was speaking in the softer tones of Fódlan’s language or the harsher ones of Almyran, something in her just  _ melted  _ at the sound. It didn’t matter what he was saying, not in this one moment. This Claude was no phantom, no ghost teasing at her senses and filling her with longing.

If she touched him, would he still feel the same? Are his hands as calloused in this life? Will he still laugh and jokingly shoo her away if she kisses at that one spot just below his collarbone? Is he still so warm as to make any blanket she tries to bring to bed utterly obsolete?

Claude turns from his companion at their entrance, cutting off whatever he had been about to say to the other man. His eyes caught hers and suddenly, Byleth felt  _ cold. _

“Ah, if it isn’t the woman of the hour,” says the love of her immortal life, as though greeting a mere stranger. “I don’t know how much of that you heard, but I hope that you can clear it all up for us.”

_ Oh.  _

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought it to be a possibility, that Claude wouldn’t remember her. That perhaps she would have to build their relationship up all over again from the ground. However, considering something a possibility and having it be her reality are two entirely different things. 

There was nothing that could prepare her for this, for her partner in crime, the one man who truly made her  _ feel _ , to look at her from behind a smile that didn’t quite reach his guarded eyes. 

As if this was their first meeting all over again. 

The Holy Tomb isn’t  _ that  _ far from here—she can probably make it there in no time. Outrun anyone who tries to chase her, although she doesn’t know why they would. None of them know her anymore. It doesn’t matter if Those Who Slither in the Dark had gotten her from there once. They can have her for all she cares. As long as they don’t wake her up again, it’s fine. It’s so, perfectly—

“Claude,” the other man,  _ Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd _ of all people, cuts in sharply, bringing Byleth back to reality from her internal panic. “We’ve only just rescued her from those people, you cannot just interrogate her so soon! We must give her time to recover.”

Steeling herself, Byleth shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. Ask what you will.”  _ Ask me how I’ve been, ask me about what I’ve seen. Ask me about all the things I’ve done over the years, ask me about all the secrets I’ve been dying to tell you. Ask me to marry you again, please, please…  _

Claude gives her a winning plastic smile. “See, Dima? It’s no problem at all.”

In stark contrast, Dimitri gives her a far more genuine, concerned, uncertain look. “If you’re sure.”

She remembers being good friends with Dimitri, once. The man may not have been in her house, but they had had an easy companionship nonetheless—between sparring on the training grounds every now and then and having tea together in their spare time. She had mourned him deeply when she had learned of his supposed execution, and mourned him deeper yet when she saw what he had become on that fateful day in Gronder Field, when she learned of his horrific and undeserved death. 

Something warm stirs in her when she sees him looking so much healthier, happier, than when she had seen him last. Saner. The eyepatch was there again, which was concerning, but he also wasn’t growling or demanding anyone’s head and seemed  _ very  _ well groomed, which is definitely an improvement. She’ll take her victories where she can get them. 

For once, she is glad that someone does not remember. 

Byleth nods. “I am.”

She denies the offer of a seat, choosing to stand for what feels like her very being’s execution. She may as well get this over with, then go enjoy her next depression nap, hopefully forever. 

Wait, no. What was she thinking? She can’t do that—no matter how much she wanted to. Of course she couldn’t. Her loved ones were right in front of her once again, dragged into a fight that they had no business partaking in anymore. They deserved better. 

She owed it to them to make sure that they could all enjoy a life far more peaceful than the one they had led previously. 

What would happen if she ran away now? Would they all be killed again, would they be born for a third time or even a fourth, to clean up this damned mess that she couldn’t bring herself to address?

No. Enough was enough. 

“Alright, then. Let’s start with who you are and how exactly you ended up in their clutches.”

“I am Byleth,” she begins, biting her tongue before the practiced  _ von Riegan _ comes out. “—Eisner. I was… taken by them in my sleep. I woke up tied to a table and they…” Oh, how easy it is to look into his eyes and tell him everything, as if they were standing in their room in Derdriu and she had just come home to his arms after some mission or another. To pretend that she is just giving a report, that she will be welcomed into the warmth of his arms once this was all over with. “They injected me with something. I think they did something to my magical reserves.”

Ashe’s eyes widened as he interjected. “But didn’t you cast that  _ Bolganone  _ as we were making our escape?”

Byleth shrugged. “I have a lot of magic.”

Claude hummed, deceptively light, but she knew that he was picking her words apart with a practiced edge, even if there were no such hidden depths to find. “So you’re a magic user? An experienced one, by the looks of it. Then, can you tell us more about this group? We’ve known about them for months and yet we still haven’t managed to make much headway.”

Whether or not that was true was anyone’s guess, Claude always did have a loose way of defining what  _ minimal information  _ was.

_ Nothing that I hadn’t learned by your side.  _ “They are known as Those Who Slither in the Dark, or the Agarthans,” Byleth answered. “They are an organization dedicated to manipulating humanity from the shadows and slaughtering a particular race that is now mostly extinct. They have existed for hundreds of years.”

They probably already knew all that, but she would probably seem more suspicious if she just dumped everything she knew about Agartha all at once. 

The intensity of Dimitri’s voice caught her off guard. “How many years?”

Wait… “Nearly two thousand.” No, that can’t be… she’s imagining things. 

“And why would they have taken you?” Claude continues, turning her attention away from Dimitri.  _ What is so special about you?  _ “You clearly weren’t some ordinary prisoner, if they had tied you down for what we assume to be experimentation like that.”

There were a lot of answers to that question. Her crest, her immortality, the fact that she is at least partially the goddess Sothis. The list goes on. “I can’t tell you that.”

Claude’s gaze sharpens with his distrust, digging the dagger deeper and deeper into the cracks of the stone that rests where her heart should be. “And why not?”

“Because,” she begins, firmly. Because she is afraid to tell the truth, afraid to say who she really is. Afraid of the inevitable rejection. 

Byleth knows how this world has evolved. Magic and crests have long since faded into legend—there is no guarantee that they would believe her at all, regardless of what they have already witnessed. Regardless of the trust that she may have once held. 

As much as she hates to admit this, Byleth cannot rely on deep-buried memories and comradery from lifetimes ago to convince her loved ones of her story.

And more importantly, she  _ will  _ not rely on them to clean up her mess. 

“This is my battle to fight, not yours.”

* * *

Dimitri had often wondered what it might be like, to see the professor again. She hadn’t made an appearance in his life again yet, unlike most of the other students and faculty of the Officer’s Academy. Byleth Eisner had always been something special, something elegant and deadly, yet warm and thoughtful. When he’d been younger, the dreams of her, the memories of their tea times and training sessions playing in his head, had been some of his favorites, a prelude to a much happier day, regardless of its content. 

In contrast to those halcyon days, the last of the first Dimitri’s life was something of a blur in his memories—he recalled the red-hot rage at seeing that  _ wretch’s _ face again, the numbing pain of being skewered like a swine at her feet. The worried, near-helpless look on the Alliance leader’s pretty face when he spotted him across the battlefield. 

The horror desecrating the professor’s ever so lovely features when he’d knocked her out of his way in his warpath. 

How would she look at him now, if she had any memory of what he had done? Would she still be horrified, unwilling to forget his transgressions? Would she be proud of the man that he has now become?

Over a decade after remembering the tragedy that was his past life, he would finally have his answer. 

_ Yo, got an update for u,  _ came the initial text from Sylvain. Dimitri had stayed behind for this particular mission—stealth was not his strong suit and he did better leading from behind the scenes, anyways. It gave him the space to think, to give orders that  _ didn’t  _ get anyone killed. 

**_D:_ ** _ Did something happen? Is Ashe okay??? _

**_S:_ ** _ Yeah, dw. He found some unconscious lady in the lower levels, gonna bring her back _

“They found a prisoner,” Dimitri says, looking up from his laptop in a hurry. The screen was filled with the information they had accumulated thus far on Agartha—the group he was beginning to suspect had something to do with the Tragedy of Duscur all those centuries ago. There was just something so…  _ familiar  _ about their cultish costumes and with that familiarity came an anger that he  _ really  _ needs to work on repressing more. 

“Really?” his co-leader asks with a raised brow from where he lounged on Dimitri’s couch, green eyes lighting up in that eager way that they did whenever some juicy secret came to light. If Dimitri had ever had any lingering doubts about his bisexuality, then Claude von Riegan was certainly always there to dispel them.

Honestly. It should be illegal for any man to be this attractive, especially a married one. 

**_D:_ ** _ Okay, tell him to be careful. If he stops responding for over ten minutes, extract him immediately.  _

“This might just be the breakthrough we need.”

Dimitri certainly hopes so. He wants answers (and  _ revenge _ , but he wasn’t going to say  _ that _ ). 

**_S:_ ** _ she’s awake and apparently badass _

Then ten minutes later—

**_F:_ ** _ Secured Ashe and the woman. Heading back now. I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere before. It’s weird.  _

Perhaps this person was someone they had known back then? That would account for odd feelings of familiarity—he’s noticed the others making comments like that, doing things that they could never have learned in this life but most definitely did in their previous lives, like old recipes, spells, combat techniques. Saying that some history text had something written that didn’t quite happen like  _ that _ , but unable to justify themselves with anything other than  _ this looks wrong. _

**_D:_ ** _ Good, keep me updated.  _

After a moment, Dimitri’s curiosity got the better of him. 

**_D:_ ** _ What does she look like? _

**_F:_ ** _ Green hair. Green eyes. Short. _

_ The professor?  _ Dimitri’s eyes widened. Could it be? Of course, the description applied to Flayn as well… reincarnation or not, it does seem more likely for Flayn to get captured than the professor. 

But then again, no one’s reported Seteth, a history professor and dean at the university, acting any more agitated than usual either… 

**_F:_ ** _ Says her name is Byleth.  _

Dimitri didn’t even notice when Claude came up behind him, peeking at the phone that Dimitri just barely managed not to drop or break in some other fashion—unfortunately, dying had done nothing to diminish his monstrous strength. 

“Huh. Green hair, green eyes, name’s Byleth… what is this, the Ruler of Dawn come back from the dead?”

In a sense. “An odd coincidence, no doubt,” he deflected. Just as Claude himself is the King of Unification risen from the grave, just as Dimitri is a mere footnote in history, back to haunt himself. 

Claude hummed. “I’ve always found her interesting, her and my namesake. To think, that they managed to create a union between two hostile countries that lasted for an entire three hundred years… it was some impressive politicking, no doubt.”

Well, yes.  _ Impressive politicking  _ summed up about half of Claude’s personality, both as the master tactician of old and the international-lawyer in training that he is now. 

“It’s too bad,” Dimitri says with a nod, “—that we don’t know what she truly looked like.” It would have been nice to have a portrait of her—one that captured the raw determination she held in battle, or perhaps the light of passion that marked her later seminars. 

“There have been a few renditions over the years, none from her lifetime,” Claude says in agreement. “I saw one that looked pretty regal in an old book, once. I think that one’s probably the most accurate, if the stories are any indication—I’ll show it to you sometime.”

Dimitri wondered if the man could recognize his wife. He wondered how it would feel to watch them fall in love all over again. It hadn’t been all that hard to see, even back in their academy days. He looked down at his phone. “They’re bringing her here.”

Claude shook his head. “That’s a bad idea. Let’s pick a more neutral location—we don’t know whether or not we can trust her just yet. Do you  _ really _ want to have to defend yourself from an assassin in your own home?”

Listening to that statement felt incredibly wrong. “No, it’s fine. I have a good feeling about this.”

“A good feeling isn’t necessarily good  _ sense _ , Dima.”

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? Dimitri didn’t necessarily have any good sense at all,  _ period _ — he never really had any to begin with. The sensible thing to do, centuries ago, when he had originally been sentenced, would have been to lie low and focus on his people’s safety. Instead, he’d listened to the voices in his head ( _ don’t you still, you silly boy? _ ) and went straight for the kill—dragging everyone else down with him. 

And okay,  _ maybe _ it was a stupid idea to let someone he supposedly doesn’t know into his apartment after finding them in the base of probable murderers. 

Especially one that he can admit to still feeling  _ things  _ for, even after all this time. 

But it was the  _ professor _ , how could she ever be anything other than good? Other than perfection itself? Maybe he has idealized her a bit too much, he supposes, but he’d never had any evidence as to the contrary—every flaw he could think of (her social awkwardness, her often too blunt approaches to problems, the way that it was sometimes so terribly hard to read her intentions) was in some way adorable. 

And,  _ well _ , she had  _ cared  _ for him and Dimitri has a huge soft spot for anyone that he knows without a doubt had shown him genuine compassion in his previous life, whose intentions even the voices hadn’t managed to taint in his mind. Dimitri treasured the certainty of it—his mind had never been very proficient in creating illusions of good things, after all. 

There is also, of course, the fact that she is destined for Claude. Relationship dynamics had hardly changed in this lifetime—Felix and Sylvain were still dancing around each other in that painfully obvious way of theirs, Hilda and Marianne still held hands in the hallways of Garreg Mach. Ingrid (unburdened by feelings for a Glenn that had never been born in this life), looked at Dorothea with clear longing, whom in turn playfully teased Ferdinand. Nothing particularly new. 

Regardless of the feelings that Dimitri himself has developed over three years of being in the same program as the man, of sharing many of the same classes and studying together and working on the same projects, of listening to his laughter and fondly watching all of those silly pranks of his, all he really wants is for Claude to be  _ happy  _ in a way that Dimitri knows that he could never make him. 

In a way that  _ Byleth  _ could. So really, it was only natural for him to want to make this introduction as soon as possible. To be able to see them smile like  _ that _ again, to save himself anymore future heartache. 

It wasn’t often that he and Claude argued, but this is a memorable occasion. And, of course, it was in the middle of this rare sight that the professor finally graced them with her presence. 

Immediately, Dimitri knew that something was wrong. 

Of course, her face hardly changed, when she first set her eyes upon Claude. It hardly ever did. That being said, Dimitri still knew what to look for. Her eyes had always been particularly expressive. 

Was he reading her correctly? Pupils blown a little wide with fear, or was that longing? Her form was so tense. The last time he’d seen her wear such an expression was… when  _ he _ had made her look like that. 

Did she… did she maybe  _ remember _ ? Everything? 

Or was he just seeing things, projecting his desires onto her, onto the ghost of the memories they had shared together? Maybe he didn’t know how to read her, after all. 

( _ He  _ did  _ take his medication this morning...didn’t he? _ )

And certainly, he couldn’t  _ really _ be seeing that chilling emotion warm as her eyes land upon him, right?

Just wishful thinking. 

But, if he is, somehow, correct… then this is cruel, this brutal unfamiliarity that her own husband is treating her with, this cold detachment. He knows that he didn’t take it too well either, when he’d met Dedue soon after first remembering, when his dearest friend’s eyes didn’t light up with recognition upon their first meeting. 

So he tries to protect her, tries to deflect Claude’s piercing questions, but Byleth has never been a woman that anyone could really protect, per se. She had always stood strong, alone or otherwise—something that he had admired about her from the very beginning. 

When she says “this is my battle to fight, not yours”, he is unsurprised. She never did like the missions they’d all been forced to take as students. 

But that never stopped them from undertaking them, now had it?

“I must respectfully disagree,” Dimitri says, cutting off whatever biting remark he’s sure Claude had in store for that. “We have long since made this our fight. We have evidence that these people have hurt innocents. How can we, in good conscience, abandon such a battle?”

Byleth shook her head. “Your safety is a priority. The Agarthans are dangerous, and you will do no good to anyone dead or maimed.”

Claude tilted his head in mock curiosity. Oh, how Claude hated when his autonomy, his strength, was questioned in any way, conscious or not. It was something oddly visceral in this life—Dimitri doesn’t remember the other man having a trigger like that in their last life, but that may just be a consequence of Dimitri’s inattention. “As much good as you did, trapped in their hideout, before Ashe came along and rescued you as if you were but a damsel in distress?”

“Less,” Byleth says with narrowed eyes. “I would have freed myself eventually. Your interference was unnecessary.”

“Ashe, how did you find her?” Claude asks, pointedly. “For curiosity’s sake.”

Oh, this is  _ not  _ how this was supposed to go. Poor Ashe sends Byleth a guilty look, but nonetheless answers. “Um. She was strapped to what looked like a laboratory table, unconscious.”

Byleth appears unperturbed. “Ashe, how did I get us out of there without injury?”

Ashe wilts further. “You used a Bolganone spell on our pursuers. They were in too much pain to counter or follow us.”

Byleth looks back at Claude, almost triumphant. Dimitri can’t take this anymore. 

“Perhaps,” he intervenes, “we ought to adjourn and continue this conversation later. When we have all rested and can consider this situation without bias.”

“That’s—“ Claude begins, but Dimitri doesn’t let him finish his protest. More firmly, he says “a good idea, that we will all follow,  _ right _ ?”

Staring Dimitri down, Claude is silent for a moment before he finally lets out a sigh. “Fine. Half an hour, then we’ll continue where we left off.”

Eh. He’ll take what he can get. “Miss Byleth, would it be alright if I asked you a few questions, privately? I am very curious about…” Dimitri pauses, considering. “—your magical capabilities,” he finally decides. 

Byleth raises her eyebrows. He is well aware that it is a weak excuse, but he needs her alone. He needs to know if  _ he  _ is not alone. 

After what seems like an eternity, she nods her assent. Breathing a sigh of relief, he leads her out into the hallway, well aware of the confused and/or suspicious stares of the others behind them. 

The professor looks at him expectantly. Suddenly, his mouth feels dry. What is he supposed to say? Is he supposed to ask her how long she’s remembered, if she’s remembered? Get down on his knees and beg forgiveness? 

Blunt as ever, she interrupts his reverie. “You had questions?”

“Ah,” he says, intelligently. “Yes, I did, professor. My apologies, it is just… hard to find the right words, after so long.”

She seems to understand what he is implying. Her eyes grow impossibly wide with… actually, he doesn’t know that emotion. “Impossible,” she breathes. 

She does! Oh, but how does he prove it to her? That he too, remembers it all? 

“Your favorite color is pink,” Dimitri blurts out, a memory from one of their very first meetings. “You don’t actually like tea that much, but you suffer through it for the rest of us. You don’t understand where all of Lady Rhea’s muscles came from, given that she hardly ever seemed to train. You had to have a crash course in axe usage before teaching Hilda. You—“

“ _ No _ .”

Dimitri startles. “... no?”

The professor stares at him, unreadable. “No,” she repeats, almost as though she is speaking to herself, not him. “You… you of all people, weren’t supposed to remember.”

Something awful begins to settle in Dimitri’s stomach. Does she not want him? His companionship, his help in holding up this monumental burden? Is she disappointed that it is Dimitri that remembers, not someone like Claude or Hilda? 

Or…  _ oh _ , of course, of course. He shouldn’t have told her. He should have tried to start anew—why on earth would she ever want to so much as be in the presence of a man she knows to have tried to knock her down?

He had had such a perfect opportunity to be close to her again, to see her smile again and have tea with her, but in his impatience he had squandered it away, just as he had done with every other opportunity presented to him oh so long ago. 

Had he really become a better man at all?

“ _ Dimitri.  _ Look at me.” 

He does. 

Byleth breathes out a sigh, old and exhausted. “I apologize, that was terrible wording on my part. I only mean that your memories… are not very kind. I wanted better for you.”

Dimitri shakes his head. Why must his mind always jump to conclusions so quickly? “I apologize as well, for misinterpreting your intentions.” He chuckles weakly. “Perhaps we should start over?”

“That would be best, I think,” Byleth agrees. “How long has it been?”

“About a decade… give or take a year or so. And you?”

“That is… a more complicated question than you might think.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being much longer than originally expected, so alas, it seems that I’ll have to deliver on some of my promises from my last note at a later date. Next time — Seteth! Relationship drama! University-slice-of-life nonsense!!


	3. Chapter 3

(iii)

“So you are…”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been—“

“Mhm.”

“I…” Dimitri shakes his head, looking at her with a mixture of horror and pity, hardly a look she had ever expected to be getting from him, of all people. “I am so sorry.”

“I think I should be saying that to you,” Byleth remarked dryly. “Your memories are not particularly happy ones.”

Yes, she may be stuck with immortality that she had never asked for and certainly, she would be much better off without it, but at least the vast majority of her memories were fond ones. She couldn’t ask for any more than that. 

“Not all of them,” Dimitri points out. This was so odd—on the one hand, Byleth mourns Dimitri’s innocence, his chance to live a normal life, unburdened by all of the things that she’d been too busy sleeping to protect him from. 

On the other… well, Byleth would be lying if she said that she didn’t feel just a little less alone now. 

Dimitri looks at her, soft blue eye filled with fondness, his lips curving up into a smile that she hadn’t seen, but had most definitely missed, in the centuries of his absence. “I have memories of you, after all.”

Byleth shakes her head, but nonetheless doesn’t argue. His outlook is much better than what she would have expected, after all. “Do you know if any of the others remember anything?”

He frowns, considering. “Bits and pieces. From what I understand, certain things that held strong emotional value to them will trigger senses of familiarity or brief flashes. They’ve been more frequent and substantial since everyone’s arrived at Garreg Mach, certainly, but I wouldn’t say that anyone has any concrete memories, no.”

“I see.” Byleth pauses. “Then why do you remember?”

“By happenstance, whether fortunate or not remains to be seen. Did you know that my name remains the same in this life as it had been in the last?”

“I do now.”

Dimitri chuckles. “I suppose so. Regardless, I’ve been born into an off-shoot of the royal family of Faerghus. During my first life this particular family had been in disgrace—they’d squandered off their wealth and hadn’t produced a single crest in years. However, as they were still technically nobility, they continued the tradition of recording the lineage and taking pride in their rather weak connection to the Blaiddyd line.”

Unsurprising. Humans tended to cling to every ounce of importance they could, even in an age where the importance of nobility was quickly dying. “Do you think blood has something to do with it, then?”

“Probably not? Modern genetics say that the bloodline should be far too weak by now to have any real impact. For example, Felix and Ingrid do not retain their former family names, although Sylvain does.” Dimitri shrugged. “The circumstances of my crest’s presence in this life still remain a mystery to me.”

Byleth nodded. Fair enough. “But you do have some theory?”

“Yes. I believe it has something to do with my family’s relic, Areadbhar.”

Areadbhar? Byleth vaguely recalls Dimitri having wielded the powerful lance in the battle at Gronder. He’d died wielding it. “Have you come into contact with it?”

“Yes. You see, around two hundred years ago my current line regained its wealth by starting a rather successful investment company. In their resulting hubris, they retook the Blaiddyd name, then claimed Areadbhar from a museum’s treasury using their meticulously kept family records.”

Dimitri bites his lip, as though the mere act of speaking of this brought him great pain. Byleth understands, doesn’t push him. After a few moments, he continues. “I’d always felt drawn to it, as it hung in the foyer of my childhood home. Eventually, my curiosity got the best of me and I stole it away to my room for the night. I was only nine, hardly old enough to know to stay away from something so seemingly harmless, and it felt… right.”

“However,” he continued, eye darkening, “—that feeling of _rightness_ didn’t last. I was bombarded by memories throughout the night and the next day, even after the relic had been removed. It was as though there were two of me in one space, suddenly. The innocent child and the foolish, angry wraith.”

That raised many questions. Did Areadbhar trigger these memories because of how close it had been to Dimitri? Was it because of its Nabatean origins? Nabatean souls, she knew, were very different from human souls—a byproduct of their immortality. They were more powerful when unattached to a physical body, but even then had interesting properties. 

She wasn’t sure if a soul was still attached to any of the relics, but if there was, then it was primitive and powerful. 

It wouldn’t surprise Byleth that something like that would be capable of dragging the familiar aspects of Dimitri’s own soul to the forefront, uncaring of the damages that it might bring. It doesn’t think, it just… wants. 

… would Failnaught do the same to Claude?

Should she seek the relic and find out? 

But no, that may be cruel. Dimitri doesn’t describe the experience as being pleasant, though she knows the circumstances to be vastly different. 

Dimitri’s eye darts to the door of the empty reading room they had ducked into. “Forgive me, professor, but could we perhaps continue this conversation at a later time? This isn’t necessarily the most private spot and we’re probably running out of time…”

Byleth nods, reading the message belying the reasonable excuse. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Dimitri breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Do you know if Seteth is here?” she asks, changing the subject.

“Yes, he is a professor of history here at the university,” Dimitri says, comprehension dawning in his eyes. “Are he and Flayn like you, by any chance?”

“They are,” Byleth confirms. “The entirety of our… family suffers from this curse.”

Family. That is a good word for it, isn’t it? Even if it feels as though she is betraying her father every time she uses it. 

“Are there others?” Dimitri asks. The more the merrier in his eye, she supposes. “Lady Rhea, perhaps?”

“No,” Byleth answers sharply, her mood taking a stark turn. “She was once immortal, yes. You may even recall her by the name of _Seiros_ . However, she is dead now, _thank Fish_.” That last part is bitterly, perhaps a bit jealously, muttered under her breath, but Dimitri catches the quiet noise nonetheless. 

“So irreverent...” he comments, processing the information. “Did Lady Rhea somehow wrong you? And… why are you thanking _fish?_ ” The last words carry an air of bewilderment. 

This eager expression suits him, she thinks. So curious and polite. So _Dimitri._

“In a sense. And I refuse to swear by the name of anyone that I know personally. If I am going to swear to something that I hold in high regard, then it may as well be fish,” Byleth answers with the utmost seriousness. She’s had this haughty argument with Seteth many, _many_ times now. Fish were much more helpful than any “saint” (fish actually provided for people instead of lazing about for centuries at a time… and Seteth said _she_ was bad), thank you very much. 

“Personally?” Dimitri asks with a raised brow, affectionate. Byleth refuses to read into that. “Are you telling me that you’ve encountered all four Saints, professor?”

“Yes. You’ve met half of them.”

“Forgive me, but I find that hard to believe,” Dimitri admits. “I can barely register the idea of Lady Rhea and Saint Seiros being the same person—does that not imply that she created an entire religion, ruled by herself, in her own worship?”

Byleth chuckled wryly. “It’s an uncomfortable idea, is it not? How much of what you were taught is a genuine moral code? How much of it was fear-mongering, a successful attempt at exerting control over you and your people?”

“I am tempted to say that all of it was a righteous moral code, however in retrospect…”

The creation of what amounted to a caste system, the ruthless eradication of anyone who disagreed. The alienation of new ideas and gods—all orchestrated by one selfish woman. 

“It’s ridiculous,” Byleth agrees. Seiros is but a false god, Cichol is Seteth, Cethleann is Flayn. Machuil is a bitter misanthrope that can barely be convinced to come to the family dinners that Flayn insists upon having every century and Indech is a scatterbrain who can barely keep his eyes open for over five minutes without a jug’s worth of coffee. 

And Sothis?

Sothis had never asked for worship, had never been awake and aware long enough to answer any prayers within her power. Sothis, as the people knew her, was nothing more than the projection of Rhea’s obsession with the mother she had lost far too early. 

If Byleth was a better person then perhaps she might have some sympathy for the twisted being Rhea had become, but she was not, so she did not. 

That really only covers the tip of the iceberg, the very beginning of Byleth’s issues with Rhea, but he doesn’t need to know any of those. Byleth’s spilled enough _feelings_ as it is, enough uncomfortable truths. They have time for more, later. 

“What of the goddess, then? Would you not swear to her?”

Swear to who? Herself? The voice that berates her every terrible decision, her fear of confronting all of the terrible things she has let happen in her grief?

Byleth shakes her head. “A story for another time. Shall we go back now?”

* * *

Byleth had never thought that she would spend the time after finally, _finally_ finding Claude again avoiding him instead of gluing herself to his side as she so desperately wished to do. 

Life rarely ever works out the way you want it to.

The rest of the meeting went about as well as she’d expected it to, with Byleth struggling to remain as cagey as possible and Claude systematically tearing down every wall she erected as though he still knew her, until she finally agreed to meet him one-on-one to discuss any information she can give at a later time. 

“Come on,” he’d said, frustration seeping into the velvet of his voice. “Give me something tangible. Let me trust you.”

Whether or not it was true, whether or not he would give her any trust at all, those words had broken her resolve. Damn her and her insatiable love. 

She is so weak. 

“When I recover,” she promised, though she had really meant _if_.

Later, she groused to the husband that her mind had conjured, the apparition that she could no longer imagine— _this is all your fault._ _Keeping me like this. Loving me._

There was something different about him, this Claude. He was tenser, even if he didn’t realize it. Always on edge in a way he hadn’t been before, even back when they first met all those centuries ago. More obviously defensive. 

Byleth wondered who hurt him this time, her dearest, and if they were still alive for her to kill for him.

Those were all questions for later, however. Right now, she had other things to deal with. Namely, disapproving elder-brother figures that really ought to be happier to see her awake and not dead in some underground laboratory. Where was Indech when she needed him?

Sleeping, probably. The lucky bastard. 

“You never did have a very good sense of timing,” Seteth says in lieu of a greeting, green eyes wary in a way that told her that yes, he was aware of this reincarnation business and no, he’d had absolutely no intentions of waking her up because of it. 

“I am a bit late to the action,” Byleth agrees, taking a seat in the mid-sized office. It was sparsely decorated, certainly, but what few decorations there were were elaborate and obviously historical in nature. There were neat stacks and shelves of books everywhere. 

Very Seteth. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve met anyone of note, have you?”

“If you mean my husband and friends, then yes.”

“ _Former_ husband and friends, you mean.”

Byleth shakes her head. “Future husband and friends.”

She couldn’t very well just leave again now, could she? She had to keep her loved ones out of this mess, reconnect with Dimitri now that she finally had the opportunity. 

And if all of that brings her back into a position where she can take back what her unbearable curse had taken from her before… 

Well. If there was any trait that she’d inherited from Jeralt, then it was most definitely his sheer opportunism. Mercenary instincts. Taking what she needed when presented with it. 

Seteth looks at her with a mixture of pity and disappointment. He sighs deeply, as though it hurts him more to say this than it could ever hurt her. “I have been aware of the phenomenon of reincarnation for a long time. However, I neglected to inform you of it for this exact reason.”

“For what reason?” Byleth questions, leaning back in her chair. “So that I would spend the rest of eternity wondering if I was waiting for nothing?”

“To keep you from getting hurt,” Seteth corrects sharply, immediately. “Byleth, you know I care for you deeply. Tell me, did Claude welcome you back into his arms the moment your eyes met? Did he get down on his knees to ask for your hand again? Did he even remember your name?”

Anger begins to well up in her chest. “That doesn’t matter, I—“

“Of _course_ it matters!” her fellow-tormented snaps. “He will never remember you, Byleth. They never really do. All that comes of it is waves and waves of false hope.”

Byleth knows him well, by now. His little tells. The man is speaking from experience. 

“Dimitri remembers.”

Seteth looks taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovers. “A rare exception, no doubt. But that isn’t the point.”

“Then what is?”

“The point, you stubborn fool, is that they will _never_ be the same person you knew. Think hard and tell me if any of them look exactly the same as they did before. Are their features exact replicas of the past? Are their mannerisms the same?”

Byleth shakes her head. She doesn’t know. It’s… it’s been too long. Their faces have fuzzed in her memory—but… now that she thinks about it… Marianne’s features are softer. Her eyes curved a bit differently. Not quite the same girl from the museum portrait. 

Oh. 

Is it really that Claude is hurting more, this time around? Or is he simply a more vicious person? Dimitri seems much the same, but he was always too good at hiding things for his own good. 

How well did she really know any of them anymore?

“I can get to know him again,” Byleth insists stubbornly. Refresh her memory. Learn new things. She’s waited for so, so long. She’s been so faithful—doesn’t she deserve her reward? The love that she has been craving for so long?

“And you will spend that entire time clinging to a man long dead, imposing him over the man you are speaking to in the present. Do you really think that that is fair?”

If she weren’t sitting, then her legs would have given out. “I won’t,” she lies desperately. “Seteth, you don’t understand—“

“Of course I understand. My former wife is my student, Byleth. I see her daily. Do you know what I say to her?”

Byleth doesn’t answer him. 

“I critique her essays. I answer her questions. I say hello when she greets me in the hallways.”

She leans down, buries her face in her hands. How does he do it? How can he resist the devilish temptations of _I love you, stay with me_ or perhaps even more intimately, _will you come fishing with me?_

“I do not ask her if she knows me. I do not ask her if she had been afraid, dying defending our village while I was on a mere errand. Most importantly, I do not ask her to let me love her again.”

There are tears in the corners of her eyes, ones that she doesn’t bother to wrangle back. She can be vulnerable here, no? With one of the few people who still knows her well enough to love her? “I… Seteth, I _need_ him.”

She can’t see the look on his face, but she can certainly imagine it. “I should have guessed that you were still waiting like this and stopped you sooner… Byleth, this isn’t healthy for either of you. You know that.”

Of course it wasn’t healthy. It had never been healthy, not since they all died and left her. But it was so sudden—at one moment they had all been there, then the next they were gone and she’d been left behind to rot in the dust. Was it really so wrong to want them all back? 

A chilling realization hits her. She’d heard this logic before, has been condemning it for most of her life. 

A sob finds its way out of her throat. 

She was no better than _Rhea_ anymore. 

She hears the sound of a chair screeching against floorboards, irritating her delicate, more Nabatean than human now, ears. Moments later, she finds herself encircled by arms, warm and fraternal. She sinks into the embrace—she is so cold, so tired.

“Please, for your own sake… _go back to sleep_.”

* * *

If Marianne had to pick a word to describe today, then _eventful_ or _confusing_ would likely be her first choices. 

Everything just happened so fast, too fast. 

Now she found herself in her girlfriend’s apartment, snuggled into said girlfriend’s arms, trying to process it all. 

Claude, Hilda’s flatmate and their shared close friend, stood by the open windowsill, a lit cigarette held between his lips, pointed outside. 

Marianne could still smell it. It made her fingers twitch, a healing spell right on their tips, ready to fix his lungs the moment that he lets her close— oh, how they all hated when Claude decided to hurt himself like this. 

“Is this really necessary?” Lorenz asks disdainfully from his spot at the corner desk. “Really, Claude? Smoking indoors? Do you have no consideration for the rest of us at all?”

“Relax,” Claude responds, distantly. “I’m blowing the smoke outside. See?”

He turns his head too quickly and coughs. Lorenz glares at him. “Be more careful! I refuse to win by default because you decided to choke on that blasted smoke.”

His words were callous, but his eyes revealed the underlying concern. Lorenz wasn’t always the best at showing he cared about the other man, having competed with him for the position of their program’s valedictorian for years—but lying underneath that intense rivalry was a strong, healthy friendship. 

“Guys, focus,” Hilda interrupted, uncharacteristically serious. But then again, this was a very serious topic. “So the lady went off with Dimitri. And then what?”

“That’s funny, coming from you.” Claude shrugged. “I don’t know what they were talking about, they ducked into one of those sound-proof quiet rooms. But I do get the feeling that they know each other, somehow.”

“But… didn’t she say that she’d been comatose for years?” Marianne pointed out, frowning. “How would they know each other? And if Dimitri really does know her, then wouldn’t Sylvain or Felix have at least known of her?”

The three of them had known each other since childhood, after all. Their whole group was inseparable, actually— it was hard to catch any of them alone without the excuse of schoolwork.

“They thought she was familiar,” Claude responds, taking another drag of his cigarette. For once, he is as perplexed as the rest of them. “But then again, didn’t we all? There are far too many holes in her story for any of this to make sense.”

He’s right. Marianne doesn’t know how to place her, but she has the oddest feeling that she’s encountered the woman somewhere before. Odder yet, she had felt warm and safe while they’d been sitting together in the car… 

But that was crazy. Marianne didn’t dare give voice to that thought, it made no sense and, well… 

She knows her friends wouldn’t mock her for saying something stupid, but old habits and intrusive thoughts tend to die hard. 

“Dimitri wasn’t exactly forthcoming about whatever’s going on with her either. He just insisted that their conversation had been private and that he’d be betraying Byleth’s confidence if he told me any of it.”

“Huh,” Hilda says in wonder, laying her head on Marianne’s shoulder. “I’m surprised— he’s usually so sweet on you.”

“I suppose even lovestruck idiots have their limits,” Lorenz sniffs. “I’d tell you to push a little harder, but that would be distasteful.”

Claude nods, for once agreeing with Lorenz without hesitation. “He’s a good person. I’d rather not play with his feelings if I can avoid it. And besides, if I did end up hurting him then it would make our lives a hell of a lot harder.”

“Half the team would probably go _poof_ ,” Hilda agrees, gesturing vaguely with her hand. “Are you sure you guys can’t think of where you might have seen her?” 

“Ignatz said that he feels like he’s seen her around campus,” Marianne says, thoughtfully. “But we’ll have to wait until he’s done meeting with his advisor to ask him about that…”

“If only you’d thought to have taken a picture of her,” Lorenz says mournfully. Marianne thinks that would have been very uncomfortable, but Lorenz isn’t always the best with social situations. 

“Actually, about that,” Claude drawls, much to Marianne’s surprise. She hadn’t _seen_ him sneak any pictures. Did he hack a security camera? That sounds like something Claude would do. “I can do you one better.”

“There’s our fearless leader,” Hilda laughs. “What creepy thing have you got for us?”

“I’m so glad you asked! One moment,” he says, putting out the cigarette, finally, and darting into his room. He emerged seconds later, carrying what looked to be an ancient-looking leather-bound book. 

“A book?” Lorenz asks, eyebrows raised. “How on earth is that supposed to help us?”

“Patience, friend,” Claude appeases. “I’m getting to that. This book is an old family heirloom. Really old. Like, five hundred years kind of old,” he begins, opening the tome and delicately flipping through the pages as though they could tear and crumble into dust at the slightest error. They probably would. 

Lorenz says something about how this should be in a museum, but Marianne isn’t really paying attention. Her eyes fall onto the script she vaguely recognizes as Old Almyran, desperately trying to decipher text without her consent, text that she feels she ought to be able to read, somehow. 

He stops at a page towards the middle of the book, overlaid by an equally yellowed and delicate paper that wasn’t part of the book itself. Marianne gasped. 

“It’s _her._ ”

There was no doubt as to who the face looking up at them from the parchment belonged to. Lips curved up into a soft smile, eyes filled with a tender happiness. Whomever sketched the woman’s likeness onto this paper must have loved her dearly, for the lines were so soft, yet firm. Faded green paints accented her hair, a splash of rosy pink highlighting her lips. 

Vaguely, the style reminds her of Ignatz’s own paintings. 

Claude nods, tracing his finger over the image, stopping at an inscription at the top. “This paper is the same age as the rest of the book, no doubts about that. You see this note, right here? It says _Byleth_. Based on the date and origin of this book, as well as the signature of the artist… it can only be one, very specific person.”

“You don’t mean…” Lorenz trails off. 

“I do,” Claude confirms. “This is none other than Byleth von Riegan, the famed Ruler of Dawn and first queen of the United Nations of Fódlan and Almyra.” 

“Holy goddess,” Hilda breathes, rosy eyes wide. “This is so weird. I totally see what you guys are saying—it’s like I’ve seen her somewhere before, but—“

“You don’t know where, or when?” Lorenz finishes, finger pressed to his chin in deep consternation. “Claude, not to go off topic, but how _did_ your family get this? And your last name…”

“A mere coincidence,” the man answers easily. “You know how it was a while back, with all those rich families claiming old, noble names. Isn’t that why your cousins call themselves _Gloucester_ , in spite of that line dying out three hundred years ago?”

“And as for how the book came into our possession…” Claude shrugs. “Well, I dunno. It’s an old book, _way_ before our time. No one really remembers.”

Silence reigns in the room. It is rare to hear Claude speak of his family, even as vaguely as this. Every time someone asked, he always just danced his way out of answering.

It was concerning. 

“Well,” Hilda says, breaking the reverie. “It’s not like thinking about this now is going to get us anywhere, considering how little we actually know about her. So how about we take a little break? Say, did anyone do the econ homework yet? It just looks _so_ hard… Mari, you’re so lucky you aren’t taking that!”

Lorenz snorts at the underlying question. “No, you _cannot_ copy my homework, Hilda. Or Claude’s, for that matter—don’t even think about it. Really, you aren’t so bad at any of this, I don’t see why—“

And just like that, everything was back to the normal facade. 

* * *

“Another, please,” Byleth requests, sliding the money across the bar, ignoring the bartender’s look of concern. 

It was so noisy here, with all the music and the dancing, but it was the first place she could find. 

She takes her drink, barely restrains herself from downing the hard liquor in one go. 

_Fuck_ , she’s a horrible person, no different than the one who put her in this situation in the first place. For daring to even consider the idea of forcing Claude to remember, of imposing herself on everyone in her desperation to regain what she has lost. 

What right did she have to do that? To impose her own Claude over this one, to possibly erase a whole human being? 

Byleth barely registers the sound of someone sitting down on the stool next to hers. 

“Hey!” Oh, there’s a familiar voice. Is the alcohol getting to her already? “Oh, you look so sad!”

The voice has a drunken lilt, but nonetheless it is smooth and musical. Byleth forces herself to look up from her drink. 

“What is it, love troubles?” the ghost asks. She takes Byleth’s silence as agreement. “Goddess, I feel you.”

Her hair was longer now, just by a few inches. Her generous breasts nearly poured out of a tight top that would have been quite scandalous last time Byleth had been awake. Her cheeks were flushed a charming pink— Byleth had almost forgotten how beautiful she was.

“Manuela,” escapes from Byleth’s loosened lips, reverent. 

“Hm? Have we met before?” Manuela Casagranda asks her, squinting. Her scrunched up expression does nothing to sully the loveliness of her features. “You _do_ look rather familiar…”

Byleth chuckles lowly, bitterly, and takes another sip. The burn of the alcohol down her throat hurts so deliciously. “A long time ago.”

“Hm,” the other woman sounds, looking her over. “What is your name again?”

“Byleth.”

“Well then, Byleth. Let’s get reacquainted, shall we?”

Manuela takes her hand, beckoning Byleth to stand up, then leading them to the dance floor. Byleth goes, allows herself to be led, tells herself this would be a one time thing.

Manuela doesn’t remember her, after all. Byleth doesn’t try to remind her. 

She’d missed this, though. They’d been drinking buddies before, back in the old days. Sometimes Manuela would drag her out to go dancing in the town, call it a _girl’s night_. It would be just like this— they’d dance and drink and sometimes Manuela would go home with some handsome man as Byleth shook her head with mirth, but made no attempt to stop her. Manuela could take care of herself. 

The music was loud and fast, pounding in Byleth’s ears. She wasn’t familiar with this type of dancing, but she got the hang of it quickly. It was guided by passion, not technique. 

They take breaks, every few songs. 

“He doesn’t look at me the same way anymore,” Byleth admits at the bar. “It hurts.”

“I know what you mean,” Manuela slurs sympathetically, not too drunk yet but probably about three drinks away from her limit. “Mine— goddess, he couldn’t even _look_ at me half the time! Research, research, research, that’s all it was with him! I was, I was just an _aftertaste_ to him! Can you believe that?!”

Byleth pats her back consolingly and buys her next shot for her. “You don’t need him.”

And she didn’t. Manuela had been perfectly happy before, single and running her school until the day she died. 

“Of course not,” Manuela agrees, raising her glass. “Fuck relationships.”

Byleth toasts to that.

They go back to the dance floor, try out different partners. It isn’t long before Byleth finds herself in front of another familiar face and despairs.

“Fancy meeting you here, beautiful,” says Sylvain over the din of the music. She watches as his eyes glance over the new, tight clothes she had just purchased for herself, reminiscent of what she had once worn as his professor. 

“I don’t want anything,” Byleth says, the alcohol making her voice more emotive. Defensive. 

Sylvain’s gaze softens. “How about a dance?”

“Just a dance?” Byleth asks, unbidden. They used to dance together at formal events—smooth, playful, platonic. 

She misses that. 

Sylvain nods, and they dance. He respects her boundaries. It is innocent, fun. Just as she remembers. 

It feels so good. 

* * *

Byleth returns to Seteth’s home that night mussed and smelling of alcohol, with two new numbers in her cellphone’s contacts list. She ignores the disapproving look, tries not to wake Flayn up.

Tomorrow is another day. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

(iv)

_ Byleth _ is an enigma—completely and utterly. 

Who is she, really, this once ‘comatose’ captive, this powerful mage, this deus ex machina, supposedly sent to relieve them of their every problem?

Claude is going to unravel her, no matter what it takes. The curiosity burns at him, the feelings she evokes within him both confuse and excite him. 

Was she Byleth Eisner, the woman so determined to protect them for no reason at all? Who insisted that these burdens were hers alone to bear, who had looked at them all with such emotion, who held some odd, indecipherable connection to every one of them?

Or was she Byleth von Riegan, the woman whose face decorated his most prized possession? Claude would never have considered this otherwise, but the resemblance was uncanny. Even if the portrait had been done recently (which it wasn’t, the thing was  _ centuries  _ old), then she would have had to be in her forties by now—he’d stolen the tome as a small child, after all. 

And yet, her face remained unchanged. Not a single wrinkle, not a single blemish. Even the small mole on the portrait’s neck was present on the real thing. It was uncanny. 

Byleth von Riegan, whose work had united Fódlan and Almyra for three hundred years… 

Sometimes, when Claude is feeling particularly cruel to himself, he likes to think about what it would have been like if her world had lasted. 

Perhaps the current international political climate wouldn’t be so tense. Maybe he’d be calling himself by the name he was born with. 

Maybe his family would be—

No. He can’t go down that road right now, he needs to focus. Byleth. He’s trying to figure Byleth out, Byleth and her newest identity. 

Byleth Rangeld is Professor Seteth Arwain’s graduate teaching assistant. She is a first year grad student in the history department, specializing in the Liberation War period and Seirosian philosophy. Her masters thesis will be a comparison between then and now, an analysis of the erosion of peace in the face of the recent resurgence of the teachings of the Church of Seiros. 

She apologizes for being so late, arriving two weeks into the semester due to a medical emergency. In fact, they’d been unsure if she’d be able to attend at all— hence why Professor Arwain hadn’t put her name on the syllabus.

A miraculous recovery, indeed.

However, in spite of this rather flimsy excuse— he  _ highly _ doubted that he would be able to find records of an undergraduate by the name of Byleth Rangeld at the Royal College of Liberal Arts of Almyra, nor is he likely to come across anything in the country’s medical database pertaining to this ‘emergency’, either— Claude found himself buying into this identity most of all. 

“As Professor Arwain mentioned in class this morning,” Byleth lectures in the afternoon discussion section, “—the concept of crests is perhaps the simplest point of reference for studying social hierarchy and border politics present in 1100s Fódlan.”

Byleth is perfectly at ease, confident in her position at the front of the classroom. There was just  _ something  _ about her. The way she asks questions, the way she listens to their answers, prompts more. No query is insignificant. She is in her element, drawing the attention of every student and ruthlessly holding it captive. Laptops were closed, pens hardly scratched against paper. 

If Claude didn’t know any better, then he wouldn’t have any issues believing that this is a woman who wants to spend the rest of her life as a professor, has spent years devoting herself to that very end. 

“Let’s consider House Goneril, for example. Does anyone recall the supposed effects of that crest?”

“It granted the bearer nigh inhuman strength and vitality.” Ah, Lorenz. Always so quick to try and please authority figures, regardless of suspicions. That much hasn’t really changed since their freshman year, though Claude has to admit that the man has grown. 

Just not as much as he thinks he has. He still has a lot of work to do, in Claude’s opinion, on thinking for himself and letting go of the classism that he was raised with. 

It’s something that Claude would have thought himself to be more annoyed about, Lorenz’s, well,  _ everything _ , but he’d always been more fondly exasperated by the man than anything else. Even when he’d first met the pompous ass. 

Byleth nods. “On paper, the primary role of House Goneril during this time period was to hold Fódlan’s Locket, the terrestrial border between Fódlan and Almyra.”

But there was always more, wasn’t there? Whatever was on paper was what the victors chose to put down. 

If a noble house held a border, then that noble house would be recorded as a valiant protector, a symbol of strength, by its country. The same thing could be said of House Gautier and Sreng. 

No one would see it as a facilitator of isolationism, as a line of bigots painting barbarism onto entire cultures. Even now, House Goneril’s history of abducting Almyran youths from border villages and keeping them as slaves is hardly discussed in Fódlan, though he knows that it is taught with a vengeance in the classrooms of Almyra. 

“However, official records are often the most biased sources available to us, especially before the time of Claude von Riegan’s stint as Grand Duke of the Leicester Alliance. They usually give an idealized view in favor of the privileged class—minimizing the impact of strife and casualties within the lower classes, or otherwise justifying immoral laws and decisions. Ultimately, they serve to mask the true picture.”

Impressively, Byleth’s eyes don’t land on him as she says his name the way several others do. 

Claude had known exactly what he was doing, when he picked this name. He wanted people to make the connection. He wanted the attention. 

It would only help him make his statement later on. 

“Imagine that you are a common citizen within Goneril territory. You believe in the existence of crests. Tell me why.”

“Um. Weren’t there a lot of accounts of people seeing crests in action?” someone asks. 

Byleth shakes her head. “Anything can be explained away with common sense. Perhaps they spent every day training rigorously. Perhaps the family simply tended to have an easier time building muscles. Why did people turn to supernatural explanations?”

“Religion,” Claude drawls, giving the most obvious answer. “People wanted something to believe in.” 

Byleth turns to him, unwilling to accept such an easy statement. “Elaborate.”

“Well, they needed hope—an afterlife to look forward to after their suffering through all the bandit attacks, the famines, the plagues, the idea that there was a purpose behind their poverty.” 

She nods, accepting this answer. “Crests originate from Seirosian theology. If one believed in the goddess, they also believed in the crest system. The crest is seen as a physical manifestation of the nobility’s divine right to rule, endorsed by the Church.”

“But wasn’t there a separation of church and state during that time period?” asks Leonie, who hasn’t studied this time period in any depth before. She was just taking this to fulfill one of her program’s distribution requirements. “Divine rights,” she says with some measure of distaste, “—kinda contradict that.”

“Officially, yes. Nobility did not need the permission of the Church to make any decisions, nor did they rely on Church funding,” Byleth agrees. “However, the Church was directly involved with the establishment of the nobility, evidenced by how many of the former noble families take their names and supposed attributes from Seirosian narratives on the beginning of Fódlan. The Church also had a military force that was essentially allowed to do as it pleased by the noble class, supporting some territories and damning others. There are other examples of the Church acting as a ruling body, such as the Gaspard Rebellion of 1180, but we’ll get to that at a later date.”

“Then it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the Church ruled through the nobility,” Lorenz concludes. “Going back to the previous example, would they not have also had influence upon the relationship between Fódlan and other countries?”

“Exactly,” Byleth says. “Unfortunately, we are running out of time. We will continue where we left off in next week’s discussion section. Write a one to two page paper on the relationship between Fódlan-Almyra border politics and the crest of Goneril in preparation for this, to be handed in in lecture on Friday. Defend your argument to the best of your ability with cited sources.”

“If you have any questions, or if you would just like to discuss the course materials, then feel free to come to my office hours later this afternoon. You are all dismissed.”

Claude got up to leave. He planned on attending the last ten minutes of her office hours, to give himself a chance to get the information she had promised with minimal interruption. Byleth was surprisingly hard to find on the daily, but it wasn’t like she could run away then—he had a feeling that her integrity as an instructor would keep her rooted to her seat until the allotted time was over with. 

Dimitri was waiting outside the classroom, presumably for Byleth of whom he stared at more obviously than he probably meant to as she answered questions for students who couldn’t make it to her office hours.

“Hey, Dima,” Claude greets with an easy smile. “Waitin’ for dear old Teach?”

The nickname slipped from his lips almost without Claude’s permission, warm and sweet, like a wine that’s been left sitting on the table just a bit too long. Disturbingly familiar—did that woman have him under some sort of spell?

Dimitri startled, a pretty pink spreading across his pale cheeks. Claude often told him that he needed to get more sun, but he didn’t really mean it—he appreciated how easily the other man blushed. 

It’s very cute. 

“Ah, hello, Claude… fancy seeing you here.”

“Mhm,” Claude hums, his smile growing just a bit more genuine. “It’s almost as if this is my morning class.”

“Perish the thought,” Dimitri laughs and Claude kinda hates the way that he has to look up to meet Dimitri’s eye. Dimitri is the kind of person whose smile can light up an entire room and his gaze is so warm that it makes Claude feel like he is looking up at the sun. 

“It’s too bad that I couldn’t join this class,” Dimitri continues wistfully. “You’re very lucky to have Byleth as a lecturer, she… loves to teach.”

Claude had a feeling that if Dimitri wasn’t the TA for a second-level economics class that took place at the same time as this one’s lecture section, then he would have switched over in a heartbeat.

There is something far off about Dimitri’s voice, as though he is a thousand years away from the present situation. Yet another confirmation that Dimitri and Byleth did, in fact, know each other somehow. 

It doesn’t make sense, doesn’t match up with any sort of timeline that Claude can come up with. Byleth doesn’t exist in records, not even a reverse-image search through the government databases of several different countries yielded any results. This was consistent with the idea that she’s been in stasis in that Agarthan base for years, but if she had been asleep for all this time… then when could she have met Dimitri? 

Dimitri himself had plenty of prior knowledge of magic, but he could substantiate himself easily via the Blaiddyd family library, which held plenty of tomes rescued from the ruins of the infamous school of sorcery in Fhirdiad that had been destroyed around four hundred years ago. 

There’s also the fact that the man can’t lie for shit, so Claude can easily take his words at face value, true or not. This is also Claude’s biggest indicator that at least part of Byleth’s story must be false, since Dimitri’s insistence that this is their first time meeting was really, utterly terrible. He has  _ so  _ many tells and Claude has had about three years of close contact to learn them all. 

Claude could probably push him more, try and get it out of him, but truthfully… he didn’t  _ want  _ to. 

See, the real problem with Dimitri is that he’s a good person. A  _ really  _ good person— the kind that made for a great captain of the terrestrial equestrian team, a patient TA, a great friend and probably a better significant other. He was humble and honest, entirely too selfless and incredibly charismatic. 

He was the kind of person that Claude could have seen himself falling in love with, when he was younger, before his heart had turned bitter and his menagerie of trust issues hadn’t been quite so developed. 

Claude had thought he was perfect. Too perfect.

Eighteen-year old Claude just couldn’t trust that. So he didn’t, and then he went digging, and found that Prince Charming wasn’t quite so perfect after all. 

Not by his own fault or anything, but still. 

In a way, it had been relieving, knowing that there was some terrible flaw to Dimitri that made him seem all the more real. A good reason to stay away from anything even remotely resembling  _ feelings. _

But it didn’t make hurting the guy any easier. Not at all. 

“Is someone jealous?” Claude teases, winking. “You can totally take my place, if you want. I can teach your little sophomores for ya.”

“Really?” Dimitri asks, half-serious. “I’d take you up on that, but I’d rather not inflict your mathematical incompetence upon those poor kids. I think they have enough on their plates as is.”

“Rude.”

“I thought you said you liked my honesty?”

Unwittingly, Claude’s eyes travel to the black of Dimitri’s eyepatch. He doesn’t feel bad about knowing. 

He doesn’t. 

“Everything in moderation,” Claude says sagely. Not that this man ever did anything moderation, really. Always putting every ounce of himself into everything—every project, every favor, every sport and every friendship. 

Claude really has to wonder as to how Dimitri hasn’t snapped or burned out yet. 

“Dimitri,” interrupts the woman of the hour. She looks much better now, in her professional-looking button down and slacks, than when she had first stumbled into their grasp. The look suits her quite a bit. Even the dyed teal hair is welcome on her features. “Let’s go.”

She nods at Claude, but seems to be making an effort to not acknowledge his presence. She’d done the same thing in class, only ever turning to him when she had no other choice. It made him uncomfortable, though he couldn’t say why. 

“And where are you two headed to?” Claude questions casually. “Aren’t you holding office hours soon, Teach?”

He can’t have her escaping, after all. 

Byleth’s gaze turns to Dimitri immediately after the nickname leaves his lips. “We aren’t leaving campus.”

Should he try to insert himself into this? No, probably not. She’s too tense—he should stick with his original plan of confronting her later. Let Dimitri loosen her up a bit first. 

Dimitri himself is looking a little helpless, but nonetheless acquiesces to Byleth’s need to get away from Claude. “I’ll see you later?”

“Of course,” he confirms. “We still have that forty-one hundred midterm to study for.”

“Right,” Dimitri says with a relieved sigh. “Later then.”

Claude wonders what this odd feeling in his chest is, as he watches them leave. 

Maybe he should go see Marianne… 

* * *

Byleth had been dreading this all day. 

It had felt so good, being back in a classroom. For all that her career had been centered around violence and politics for most of her life, Byleth had never been happier than when she was teaching. 

The cover story that Seteth had provided her with was truly fantastic, coming with a complimentary position she enjoyed and a chance to immerse herself into a field of study often enough to forget about all her life’s problems. 

Understandably, Seteth had blown up at her when he learned that she hadn’t started their conversation with the fact that she’d been kidnapped by the Agarthans, as he’d been under the impression that they didn’t have the manpower to do that kind of thing anymore and that the Holy Tomb was enchanted heavily enough to prevent this exact situation. 

He’d quickly changed his mind about wanting her to go back to sleep. In fact, he’d practically wanted to lock her up in his and Flayn’s home for a few years, keep her safe and not dead and tortured in a basement somewhere. 

Always so protective, this brother of hers. Byleth understands Flayn’s pains on a spiritual level. 

But Byleth had insisted that she’d go utterly insane if they went with that idea. She isn’t a child and she isn’t asleep now either. They both knew who was superior in combat, too. Her magic is also starting to return to its full strength, slowly but surely. 

She didn’t tell him that part, though. No need to worry the man anymore than she already did. 

It took a bit of convincing, but Seteth eventually agreed to pull some strings and set up an identity for her that allowed her to stay as close to him as possible, while also ensuring that she didn’t have to do too much acting. 

They agreed that it would be best for Byleth to remain awake until the threat was neutralized, but that brought them to the issue of how exactly they would deal with the Agarthans. 

Byleth wanted to just take care of it on her own, but Seteth thought that that was unrealistic of her. She’s good, but she’s not  _ that  _ good. Seteth himself is a bit rusty, and they both agreed that Flayn was too traumatized from their last dealings with these people to involve. 

And it wasn’t like Machuil or Indech were going to be much help either, unfortunately. Byleth was hesitant to ask for them to help out, considering the fact that they have been hiding from the Agarthans for so long and have spent too long in their draconian forms to be able to maintain their human ones for longer than a day or two at a time, the reverse of Seteth and Flayn’s problem. 

As much as Byleth hated to admit it, she was going to have to rely upon her former companions’ help for this one, no matter how desperately she wanted to just hide them all away, to be their shield against the darkness and safeguard their happiness.

Dimitri has definitely been a great help and between him, Seteth, and Flayn (of whom had been ecstatic to see Byleth awake), she now has a pretty good picture of the situation she’s found herself in. 

Now she just needed to retrieve the Sword of the Creator from its hiding place (which hasn’t been disturbed, thankfully. She would  _ know _ ) and take care of this mess as quickly as possible. 

Maybe she wouldn’t go back to sleep, after this was all done and over with. Going drinking with Sylvain and Manuela had been… fun. Even if they did all get drunk enough to call the rather young dean of the history department (who  _ really _ shouldn’t have been getting drunk in a club either, honestly) a four out of ten to his face. 

(Meeting him the next morning had been quite… awkward, to say the least. Manuela had been  _ far  _ too amused, lucky medical ethics professor that she was. Byleth hasn’t mentioned it to Sylvain, lest the entire group hear about her antics.)

And, again, she would truly love to become a professor again. She may not be teaching strategy anymore, but perhaps she could settle herself in as a logics professor. 

However, there were a few obstacles that she had to get over before she could get to that point. 

Namely, this conversation. 

It was the last ten minutes of Byleth’s office hours and the last pair of students had just left her office. Claude walked in a few minutes after they were gone, locking the door behind him with a  _ click.  _

“Hey there, Teach,” he greets with all the casualness of an old friend, settling down to lounge on the plush chair directly across from her. “I’ve got a few questions for you, as you already know.”

The nickname makes her heart hurt. Especially since she’s made the decision that was best for him—the decision to leave him to his own life. 

“Class-related, I hope,” Byleth says, praying that he couldn’t hear the exhaustion settled into her chest. 

“What, can’t I just try and get to know you a bit better?” 

His eyes were green. So green. They bore into her soul— she wondered what he could see. 

“Is professionalism too much to ask for?”

“Yes,” Claude says without missing a beat. “In our situation? Way too much to ask for.”

Byleth rolls her eyes. Of course. “Ask away.”

“Glad you’re being so cooperative. So, Rangeld? Where’d that one come from?”

That’s not where she expected him to start, but okay. 

“It’s a tribute to a family member,” Byleth says carefully. “He used to teach, as well.”

_ He’s dead and I don’t want you to ask about him _ , she doesn’t say. Claude gets the hint. “Right. And your connection to Professor Arwain? You two seemed awfully familiar.”

“Familial,” Byleth answers simply. 

Should she ask him about himself? Seteth informed her that there was no Riegan family anymore, making his last name awfully suspicious. Did he truly not remember anything? Why would he choose  _ that  _ name?

No… her curiosity is irrelevant. She has to maintain distance. 

“Really now? I can see some resemblance there, but I thought that his only family was his daughter.”

“I’d been missing for a long time.”

“Hm.” She really can’t get anything past him, can she? He’s so hyper focused on finding any and every hole in her story. “That’s odd. The professor seems like the type to kick up more of a fuss over a missing family member… but I didn’t find any mentions of a missing person connected to him.”

“He didn’t think that I was alive to be found.”

Claude nods, but it is obvious that he doesn’t quite believe her. 

“Okay. Next question—what is your connection to Agartha? Why would they take you? Don’t tell me it’s none of my business, again. You know that isn’t true anymore.”

Reasonable enough. “My family angered them years ago. They are also after Seteth and his daughter, Flayn.”

“That other family member of yours. Did they…?”

“No,” Byleth shakes her head. Thank goodness. Alois had died happy, of old age. His daughter had held one of his hands as he passed, she the other. 

Claude nods. “The experimentation?”

“We have a… unique magic in our bloodline. They want to use it.”

“A crest, you mean.”

Byleth startled. “No, that’s—“

“Cut the crap, Teach,” Claude interrupts. “I’m not stupid. If magic exists, then it stands to reason that other things written in the texts of old are also real. Really puts your lecture into perspective, doesn’t it?”

“It still applies,” Byleth says, keeping her voice level. “Real or not, crests were always used as a symbol of control. I am not trying to mislead anyone and neither is Seteth.”

“It’s just the curriculum, sure. That aside, which crest would possibly be worth putting someone into stasis for so long?”

Byleth swallows. “I can’t tell you that.”

“You don’t want to tell me that,” Claude corrects, his gaze hard. Why was this so important to him?

Byleth looks down. “I don’t want to tell you that,” she agrees.

He looks at her for a long moment, considering, as though he isn’t quite sure if he really wants to say whatever it is that’s on his mind. “It’s the crest of Flames, isn’t it?”

Byleth freezes. 

“The crest of the goddess herself… that would definitely be something worth pursuing, I’d say.”

He knew. He knew, but he didn’t  _ know _ . His smiles didn’t reach his eyes. He didn’t know her. Was he going to use her and her crest, the Sword of the Creator, the way that he had wanted to before he had ever loved her?

She’d let him. Her breathing was becoming labored. She’d let him use her, she’d always let him use her because she loved him so much and it didn’t matter if he never loved her again. 

It was fine. He’d always been using her. He used her to rule this country before, used her to unite it with Almyra. He flew her crest on flags to give their army divine providence, he let people look to her when he was the one really making all the decisions. 

What was the difference again, between then and now? Was there one?

He didn’t love her. 

“Teach...? Byleth?”

The reward wouldn’t be so sweet anymore, she supposes.  _ Unite these countries, rule, make all the big decisions. Stay in that castle all alone and wait for me while I go and accomplish my dreams. It’s okay, I love you. I love you with everything I am. I’ll help you. _

Her chest is so tight. Where are her words?

This is familiar. She used to get like this after the war. Whenever she remembered killing people she loved, not being able to save others. She woke up like this sometimes. 

When was this, again?

He’s saying something, but she’s having such a hard time paying attention. That was funny. Wasn’t she just begging him to speak to her a few days prior? 

She was in her office. Ferdinand had come to her office hours, but hadn’t she killed him? Hadn’t she let his lean body fall with an arrow through his neck, let him be trampled by the warhorses he’d loved so dearly, buried the body too disfigured to be sent back to his family in a shallow grave?

But he was  _ alive  _ now, and so are the others, it doesn’t make sense,  _ why— _

There are strong, muscular arms around her waist, a sharp chin heavy on her shoulder. She was being held in all the right places, firmly and warmly. The small of her back, the bottom of her neck. A familiar, yet somehow different, scent filled her nostrils. 

_ It’s okay, By. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to— _

Suddenly, she could breathe again. 

Claude was always so good at grounding her when she woke up and couldn’t feel air in her lungs. He was solid, he was safe, he was… 

Byleth blinked. Once. Twice.  _ Oh, shit.  _

“Claude…?”

All of a sudden, it is though the spell has been broken. Claude withdraws from where he had been kneeling by her chair, takes away all of his warmth and comfort, leaving her aching. 

Panic attacks never come at good times or for good reasons, it seems. 

His gaze is wide and confused, like a deer caught in headlights. He stands and walks away, stopping in front of the door. “I… I went too far. I should have known better than to ask such questions so… soon after your captivity.”

Byleth wants to say something, but her lips feel so heavy. 

“I’m sorry. For that. And for… for touching you like that. I don’t know what came over me.” He looks as panicked as she still feels. “Are you alright?”

Byleth nods slowly. The way he had held her was so… familiar. Practiced. Intimate. As if he knew exactly where his hands should go. 

“Right. That’s… good, at least. Sorry. I should… probably leave you alone now. I think I’ve bothered you enough for today.”

_ No. No. Please don’t. Not again.  _

He turns away, unlocks the door. “I’ll see you in lecture tomorrow, right? Um. Try not to have anymore panic attacks before then. Or ever. Yikes. That sounded insensitive,” he chuckles nervously at his own rambling. “I’m going to go now, before I say anything worse.”

And just like that, he is gone. 

Byleth takes a deep breath, buries her face in her hands and tries not to sob. 

* * *

It really was awful, the way that Ingrid hardly ever got to see Dorothea anymore. 

But it wasn’t surprising, either. What, with the way that Dorothea’s career as an opera singer is finally taking off, her obligations to the university’s theatre and music departments, the children’s center she volunteered at. Ingrid’s internship with the FBIF, her rigorous training, her captainship of GMU’s aerial equestrian team. 

That and the frankly fantastical secret battle that Dimitri and Claude have gotten her involved in, but hey, Ingrid has never been one to leave friends in need or innocents in danger. 

So it really is rare for them to have time to sit down for tea like this anymore. 

Ingrid treasures every second of it. 

Dorothea’s impressive heels clack against the hardwood floor of the small cafe as she carries their drinks to the window-side table. It is an authoritative, attention-grabbing sound. Ingrid doesn’t know how she does it, how her long legs can stand the extra four inches from the floor. She can barely walk in one-inch without falling over herself. 

“Chai lattes for two,” Dorothea announces, a grin gracing her scarlet-painted lips as she sets them down. “You just can’t find drinks this good anywhere else.”

Ingrid smiles back, taking a sip of the tea and letting out a contented sigh. This cafe was a gem. “No, you can’t. It’s been a while since we’ve last been here…”

“A few weeks,” Dorothea agrees. “Far too long. How have you been, Ingie?”

Busy. So busy. Does she even have time to breathe anymore? Not that she really wants any time to herself, she’s happy with her workload—but she really does miss seeing friends other than those that she basically lives with at regular intervals. 

“Not bad,” Ingrid says. “It’s certainly never a dull day.”

“It isn’t, is it, Agent Brandl?” 

Dorothea’s laugh rings more beautifully than any bell. A hot flush rises to Ingrid’s cheeks. “I’m not an agent yet,” she protests. “I’m just an intern. I only train and observe.”

Which is part of why their little mission excited her so much— Ingrid is set to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Fódlan after she graduates this year, but she still doesn’t have much field experience, for obvious reasons. 

Well. Not any official field experience, at least. 

But they had been sabotaging operations for months, gathering (incredibly limited, these people were hard to crack) information and had even succeeded in rescuing someone.

The Agarthans needed to be taken down, no doubts about that. They were involved in all sorts of shady dealings—human trafficking, drugs. Claude even theorized that they were involved in the current conflicts between Fódlan and Almyra. 

Of course, the smart thing to do would be to get the authorities involved, but then what? The Agarthans were magic users and magic was… terrifying. Regardless of where her allegiance was going to be lying at some point, the idea of a government having that kind of power… 

( _ — lightning crashes into the sky, no, no, no, her pegasus!, please no, they’re falling,  _ His Highness  _ is _ …!)

She doesn’t like it. 

“So? You’re still quite close to the action. Tell me, is it anything like those crime dramas we used to watch all the time?”

Ingrid laughs. “A bit.” They’d been roommates, freshman year. She remembers late nights curled up in her bed, blankets piled high as they marathoned dramas and procedural. 

There is a twinkle in those large green eyes. “Mm. And the romance? Is it up to par?”

“Of course not,” Ingrid huffs. “Workplace relationships are highly unprofessional,  _ especially  _ in this field. I would never.”

“That’s a shame,” Dorothea hums. “Married to your job as always, Ingie?”

“As if I’d ever need anything else.” Truly. “By the way, how is Ferdinand?”

Dorothea lets out a sigh at the change in subject. “He’s… he’s fine. I don’t know, I’m a bit concerned.”

Ingrid dutifully ignores the pang in her chest. She was the one who asked. “Why is that? Is everything okay with you two?”

“Oh, our relationship’s fine. He’s so sweet to me, but that isn’t news, now is it? It’s just that…”

“That?”

Dorothea pauses at Ingrid’s prompting, considering. “You remember how Ferdie and I went to high school together, right?”

Ingrid nods. “Yes, I remember. You used to hate him.” And now she didn’t. 

“Ah yes, I was so bitter back then,” she says with a giggle. “We used to have a close, mutual friend back then. She was… wonderful. Strong, authoritative, always a pleasure to speak with.”

Ingrid wasn’t following. Did an old flame show up or something?

“I may have even had feelings for her, way back when. Nothing came of it, of course. But, who knows…”

“What happened to her?”

“See, that’s the thing. No one knows. She just up and… disappeared one day. They think it was a kidnapping— there was an investigation for a few years. But it went cold.”

Oh. Right. Ingrid thinks she remembers something like that happening in Enbarr—she’d still been living in Fhirdiad back then. 

“A part of me still worries about her, even now. Is she still alive? Is she trapped somewhere? Is she suffering?”

Ingrid reaches out to place her hand over her friend’s in comfort. “If she’s out there, then…”

“Then people like you will find her, someday. I know. It just… doesn’t make it any easier to bear, you know?” Dorothea gestures with her other hand, frustrated. “The anniversary of her disappearance is coming up soon. Ferdie always gets so… distant, this time of year. It scares me sometimes.”

“He’s still grieving,” Ingrid says. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“Maybe,” the other woman says non-committedly. She turns her head to the window, looks up at the sky, as though Ingrid is no longer there.

“Wherever you are… I hope you’ll come back to us soon,  _ Edelgard. _ ”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp. Byleth’s trying her best, but alas, mental health can really be an uphill battle and Claude isn’t helping. 
> 
> Special thanks to my best friend for looking this over and helping me figure out how to best depict a panic attack! Ah, the wonders of psych majors... 
> 
> I really do want to explore the mental health implications behind the characters in the game, so while I do promise to try my best to depict these things as accurately and respectfully as I can with the resources available to me, I am ultimately a vet student and an A in introductory psychology/sociology doesn’t make me an expert, so I may not always do the best job. If I do screw up somewhere, please tell me and I’ll see what I can do to fix it! 
> 
> As always, thank you all for coming this far with me! This story has already been a wild ride and really, we’re only just getting started. ;P


	5. Chapter 5

( v )

  
  


For all that Claude liked to pride himself on being unpredictable, he is ultimately a creature of habit. 

When he was confused he liked to light a cigarette and let the smoke fill his lungs, distract him from everything else around him so he could just sit down and  _ think _ . It was a bad habit, but a useful one—a smoker fits in much more easily in all the wrong crowds to find all the right information, after all. 

When he was disappointed, scared, or tired, he liked to run. To his room, the library, somewhere. Somewhere safe, somewhere where he doesn’t have to put on any kind of show for anyone but himself. 

The aviaries have always been a personal favorite. 

Growing up in Almyra, there had always been a special sort of cultural honor in the art of falconry, in the bond between human and raptor. When he was twelve, he’d started with a red-tail— a sweet thing, as viciously sweet as any female hawk could be. 

Oh, how he loved —  _ loves _ — that bird, whom he had spent so much time with, whom he had trained to sit on his glove, to follow after him in the pine woods they traversed, who nipped at him if he was taking too long to feed her as she perched upon his arm in her royal aviary. His closest companion of five years.

But then she’d fallen ill, an infection in her right eye. It was terrifying. She’d recovered well enough, his darling fighter, but he couldn’t fly her anymore. That didn’t matter, didn’t stop him from treating her like the queen she is. 

(His father likes to take advantage of that love. He knows Claude won’t speak with him unless sweet photographs of Huriya,  _ his freedom _ , are involved.) 

He did, however, have to take a new bird on. If only to have an excuse to leave the grounds. 

If someone were to ask Claude as to why he’d chosen Garreg Mach University as opposed to his many, equally prestigious options, he’d say that he just wanted to get out of Almyra. He liked the diplomacy and political science programs. He was fascinated by its history. 

Those were all true, but if he has to be completely honest then the real reason why he picked it is, by and far, the falconry team and its luxurious aviaries. 

The weight of his bird upon his arm, heavy, warm, familiar, grounded him. He reached into the pouch at his hip, took out a fresh mouse, offered it to his feisty gyrfalcon. 

He’d remembered to put a thick leather glove onto his left arm this time, miraculously, but he didn’t always. There were a slew of suspicious scars on his arm, which yeah,  _ really  _ shouldn’t be there, he’s a  _ professional _ for stars’ sake, but he couldn’t really help it. Claude had always felt something of a connection to his animals, something that made him feel right at home with the predators, made him forget that physical barriers were ever even necessary. 

His mother used to say, a long time ago, that if wyverns still owned the skies, then he would ride them bareback. 

Claude felt himself grow calmer as he watched her devour the mouse, making a mess of the poor glove she sat on. It wasn’t one of the hunting gloves, or one of those embroidered falconry gloves they used for presentations, but it was a good one. 

A shame, considering how annoying it was to launder the blood out. 

And her  _ feathers.  _ Yeesh. He should’ve changed her birdbath out before he sat down with her. She was going to need it—such a messy eater, his silly, silly bird. 

Claude sighed, the sound momentarily drawing his companion’s attention before she turned back to her meal, evidently deciding that there was nothing wrong with her master, or at least, not more so than usual. 

He knew he shouldn’t put it off. He needed to process it—his encounter with Byleth. 

There was something powerful about the familiar. Here and now, it calmed him. Helped him think clearly through his panic and confusion. 

However, familiarity is as dangerous as it is soothing. Claude could have handled it, the panic attack. He’s seen friends have them, had one himself the first time a man tried to kill him. In fact, it had been beneficial for him to have witnessed it. He now knew that Byleth had the Crest of Flames and that Agartha wanted it. It was valuable information. 

That wasn’t the problem. 

The problem was that his instinct hadn’t been to approach her the way he would have approached anyone else, it hadn’t been to tell her to breathe, to bring her water. 

No. It was as though his body, his muscle memory, had had a mind of its own. His arms had wound around her without his permission, fitting there as though he belonged, as though against his chest was the only place where  _ she  _ belonged. 

And  _ oh _ , it had felt so  _ right _ . He hadn’t wanted to let her go and yet, he had. 

Because he was scared. 

He didn’t understand why he was touching her so familiarly, why she felt so familiar to him. He’d never met her before, only stared at her pretty face on ancient parchment and imagined that that beautiful smile had been for him. 

Byleth, before she had ever stumbled into his life, had only ever been a fantasy. He’d long since accepted that he couldn’t have nice things, birds notwithstanding— his siblings scorned him, his stepmother couldn’t look at him and he didn’t have the voice to speak to his own mother anymore. 

Friends would, inevitably, eventually leave. He’d graduate. Even as a freshman, no, before that, Claude had always known that he’d end up all alone, with just his schemes, his dreams and his fantasy of someone who smiled just for him. 

But that was just it, wasn’t it? Claude had never been lacking in self-awareness. He knew the reason why he had pushed her so hard. It had been because part of him hadn’t even believed that she was real. 

Yet, there she was. In his arms. Solid. Looking at him with such, such  _ vulnerability! _ At him, of all people. He doesn’t understand it. 

Hasn’t anyone told her yet that he’d discovered the Agarthans by listening in on goons in a shady bar? How low he’d gone to sate his own curiosity, the places he’s been to, the people he’d manipulated to get his information, the fact that even if his cause was good  _ now _ , it wasn’t always?

He wanted to believe that his mind had made it all up, yet he knew that she was as real as the bird staring at his hip, demanding more food, to which he acquiesced with a chuckle. What a glutton— didn’t she know how important it was for her to maintain her weight?

Truly, the problem is that Claude just can’t stand secrets, any but his own. Especially not this one. 

Especially not the secret of why she had felt so precious in his arms. 

* * *

“You hid the Sword of the Creator… in a grave?”

“Near a grave,” Byleth corrects, then pauses thoughtfully. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

_ It seemed like a good idea at the time _ . The more he learned about Byleth, the more he realized that to be a statement that applied to nearly everything she did, regardless of possible outcomes. 

Byleth had always been a person of the  _ now _ , someone who acted to the best of her abilities with the resources she had at the moment. She did not like to plan ahead. Consequences were dealt with as they came. She was resourceful and efficient, but not necessarily in the way that a good ruler ought to be.

No. Byleth was no queen— she was but a mercenary, through and through. 

Dimitri liked that. It was much more in line with what he remembered of her—he was getting worried that his memories of her had been distorted by reverent histories and idealized anecdotes. 

“While I do have to give you points for creativity, I  _ also  _ have to question the practicality of such a choice. Can’t someone just… dig it up at any time?”

Byleth shrugs. “They can try. An old friend of mine enchanted the container to high hell—it’s held pretty well thus far.”

“Ah,” Dimitri says, frowning. “Was it anyone I know?” Magic had never been his strong suit, in fact he only knew a single healing spell that Byleth had pressured him to learn back in his school days. Sylvain often assured him that that was very “sexy” of him, only knowing the one, but Dimitri thinks he ought to learn more, be able to do something else with these bloody hands of his other than destroy. Still, he ought to thank her for that, again, the Goddess knows how many times that one spell has saved his ass over the years, in both lifetimes. 

She shakes her head, chuckling. “No. This may come as a surprise, but I did make  _ some  _ friends over the centuries after everyone died.”

_ After everyone died.  _ How can she say that so… so casually? How long has it been since she had accepted this, accepted that everyone was gone?

How does she feel to be together with them once more?

“I see… might I ask what they were like?” 

Dimitri had managed to find plenty of records of Byleth’s exploits after his… death, during the war, during her reign. But those weren’t quite genuine. They lacked detail, lacked emotion, lacked any real semblance of  _ Byleth. _

He’d been starved of her, he realizes now. Ravenous for what had once made him happy, a problem that he’d encountered often throughout the years. 

“Haughty,” Byleth answers without pause. “Kind. Passionate. Creative. Overdramatic.”

Her lips are curving up into a smile, small and soft. It was mesmerizing. That look in her eyes? Dazzling. He never wanted to look away. 

Oh, what a horrible person he was, staring at her like this. He had no right to, no right to look at a woman who belonged with another with such affection. He had no right to look at her husband in that way either, and yet he did. 

Disgusting. 

“They sound fantastic,” he says honestly. “I’m sure that I would have loved to have known them.”

“She would have made an interesting Blue Lion,” Byleth agrees. “Even if the rest of my affliction is a curse, there have been some perks. I’ve been able to meet many great people, experience incredible things.”

As they walk, Dimitri takes note of Byleth’s posture. It is so much more relaxed than he’s seen it be in a long time. There isn’t a trace of the defensiveness that has characterized it since their reunion. 

They are alone, together, and finally, she is completely at ease. 

That thought, coupled with the comfortable atmosphere, warms him. With some measure of shame, he basks in that warmth. He’s allowed to have good things, no? They are friends. His… other feelings are irrelevant. 

“I would like to hear more about those things, sometime,” Dimitri tells her with a grin. It is ironic, that they thus far have only ever been so comfortable together in a graveyard, of all places. 

“Over coffee.” They walk to the edge of the cliff the cemetery is situated on, stopping in front of a familiar, faded stone. Not too far away, is the grave and memorial of Archbishop Rhea, which had been rebuilt for the… seventh time? About forty years ago. A stray thought crosses his mind and stops him in his tracks. 

“Byleth?” Dimitri asks, voice tinged in uncertainty. “Did you…?”

Even in the dead of night, Byleth sees where his gaze has landed. Without hesitation, she says “yes.”

“... seven times?”

“Yes.”

“... with a sledgehammer?”

“Yep.”

“...you’re planning on doing it again, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” Byleth says thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll use the Sword of the Creator this time. I haven’t done that in a while…”

“And you haven’t thought about just… leaving it alone? I understand that you have grievances with her, as do I for that matter, but the archbishop has been dead for a long time now. Perhaps it is time to leave her be?”

Truthfully, Dimitri has a complicated relationship with his memory of Archbishop Rhea. Objectively, he hates her. He hates her for what she has done, he hates her for the Crest system she had created (that… had not been a pleasant story to hear) and all the things that it had put his friends through, he hates her for all the lives she has ruined and for the sake of all the children whose innocence she had torn away in the countless cruel missions given to the students of the officer’s academy. 

He hates her for not sharing the church’s knowledge of sanitary systems with the Kingdom, inadvertently causing the plagues that had killed so many and invited Cornelia, the  _ wretch _ , into his father’s court.

He’d never thought about it before, about the differences in advancement between Garreg Mach and Faerghus. About how young the students were, about the fact that they all went to a school to learn how to  _ kill  _ of all things. It had all seemed perfectly normal back then, but studying it all now through a modern lens, plus the added perspective of all that Byleth has told him about Rhea’s extensive reign?

It was sickening. 

However, Dimitri has always had a hard time separating the emotions inspired by old memories and new ones. Upon reflection, that much was not hard to comprehend. For all that he wants to wrench Edelgard’s treacherous head from her body, he has long since forced himself to admit that a part of him also loves, always will love, her as only a brother could. 

He had wanted to see her become emperor. He had wanted her to see her do well and smile and be happy. 

A decade of reflection has also helped him realize that it didn’t actually make any sense for him to blame Edelgard for Duscur. She had been too young and frankly, too short, to match the profile of any instigator from back then. 

But he absolutely  _ could  _ blame her for everything that came after that. He was certain that she had at least come to cooperate with those people and she most definitely could be held responsible for the events leading to his supposed execution, the horrendous conditions his people were subjected to while he was in the midst of a five-year long episode, all of the lives that were lost in the war… 

Dimitri hasn’t forgiven her. He never will. But he can’t erase so many years of caring for the damned woman, just as he can’t quite erase all the feelings of respect that came with years of worshipping the church and looking to Archbishop Rhea as one of his guiding lights. 

Byleth shakes her head. “She lives on in the scars that she has left upon those still living.” 

Those still living? With the exception of himself, everyone else is now but a blank slate, washed of the stains and sins left by their previous struggles. And though he may be scarred, Dimitri is reluctant to attribute those to Rhea. Edelgard, Cornelia, Duscur, yes. Then does she mean… ?

“Forgive me for asking this, as it is a quite… personal question, but Byleth… what scars has she left upon you?”

He shouldn’t be asking, yet the curiosity burns at him. Byleth’s anger towards the archbishop has always struck him as awfully personal, ever since she first admitted to it days ago, as though the woman had personally struck her down, spat in her face, plunged something into Byleth’s heart with her own hands.

Byleth stares at him for a moment too long. Dimitri’s anxiety flares. Has he gone too far? Has he ruined everything yet, as he always does?

Dimitri opens his mouth to apologize again, but Byleth beats him to it. “Stop apologizing so much,” she admonishes sharply. “You’re right to be curious.”

She takes his hand, hers so small against his own. So delicate. Heat blossoms in his cheeks as she pulls it to her breast. He wishes to protest — the impropriety! — but he does not want her to stop touching him. His palm lands directly on her chest, over her heart, he can almost feel the warm, soft flesh beneath her thin cotton shirt and—

_ Wait.  _

Where is her heartbeat? 

Alarmed, he presses a bit harder, searching. Impossible. Where…? “Byleth,” he says urgently. “Where is your—“

“My heartbeat?” she asks with a sardonic chuckle. “I don’t have one.”

“What do you  _ mean  _ you don’t have a heartbeat?” Dimitri asks incredulously. “That’s biologically impossible!”

“So is immortality, technically speaking. Reincarnation is also not very scientific.”

“Well, yes, but you’re not supposed to be able to function without a heartbeat. I’m no biologist, but even I know that just isn’t how the human body works!”

“I have a crest stone instead of a heart,” Byleth supplies helpfully. 

Dimitri suddenly feels very, very exhausted. “What.”

“I was stillborn.”

“... I’m sorry?” 

“My mother was a fertile homunculus created by Rhea.”

She’s fucking with him. She has to be. A  _ homunculus _ ? 

“Have you ever read  _ Frankenstein _ ? Think of that, but if the creation hadn’t been rejected by the creator.”

Dimitri’s mind whirred. Had that been why she had seemed so frigid when they first met? Was it because she was half living doll, only just uncovering the part of herself that was so beautifully human?

“Captain Jeralt,” Dimitri said urgently. “Did he… know about this?”

Had her father known what Rhea had done to his only daughter? Had he condoned it? On one hand, the woman had saved her, if Dimitri was right about Byleth implying that she had used the crest stone to revive her. Had made it so that Byleth could live, so that she could eventually come and teach them, so that  _ he  _ could eventually meet her. 

But then again, Dimitri knows all too well the feeling of wondering whether or not one was human, the feeling of not belonging simply because his circumstances had made him so different from everyone else, even from the people that he had known the longest. 

And if this was the reason why Byleth hated Rhea so, then… 

Oh. 

Byleth shakes her head. “Not exactly. He knew she did something to me at birth and he also knew that I had no heartbeat. He was uncomfortable with the attention she gave me and chose to raise me outside the monastery because of it.”

A pragmatic man and a good father. At least Byleth’s memories of him could remain untainted. 

Dimitri had his guesses on the real reason why Byleth hated Rhea so deeply, but he wouldn’t voice them. Couldn’t. She had seemed so happy, just a moment before. So much better than when he had seen her after her last meeting with Claude, a few days ago. 

Neither one of them wanted to talk about it. Dimitri didn’t know what to do. 

No, this topic was best for another occasion. 

Dimitri nodded in respect for Captain Jeralt, whose grave wasn’t far from here. They fell into silence, Byleth indicating where they should start digging. Byleth had brought him along as more of a sentry than anything else, but still he insisted on helping her dig. It was only right.

But it did, he admits, make him something of an awful sentry. 

Which is how he and Byleth end up running from the guards, empty fake grave behind them and the Sword of the Creator on Byleth’s hip, thanking whatever deity still existed for foggy nights with low visibility. 

“Gentlemen,” Byleth began when they were safe, panting slightly, “—are terrible guards.”

Dimitri most assuredly does not spend the rest of the night pouting at that, thank you very much. 

* * *

“I cannot believe you,” Seteth rants as Byleth sighs into her tea. “First you go off and get kidnapped by Those Who Slither in the Dark and don’t even  _ tell us  _ about it until after you’ve had yourself a pity party about your former husband.”

Well, in Byleth’s defense, her own safety had never really been a priority of hers, but Seteth had always had other opinions on that. 

“Are you ever going to let that go?” Byleth cuts in. “This the third time you’ve scolded me about that.”

“ _ No _ ,” Seteth snaps just as Flayn fondly says, “give him another two or three days.”

Seteth gives the young-looking woman a look. She shrugs in response. “You really don’t stay angry for very long, Father.” Byleth nods in agreement. She’d give him four, an extra day of anger will probably be added out of sheer spite. 

Seteth shakes his head. “ _ Then _ , you go off and get yourself drunk when there is  _ clearly  _ still a threat out there—“

“A wise man once told me that alcohol is the best bandage for matters of the heart,” Byleth says sagely. “And besides, it isn’t as though I was defenseless.”

“Don’t use Jeralt’s words against me. Especially not since  _ now  _ you’ve gone and almost gotten yourself arrested!”

“I was just trying to secure the sword. It’s kind of important.”

“It is on the news, Byleth! The  _ news!” _

Flayn nodded in agreement with her father, her lips quirking downwards. Though she hadn’t grown very much in size, Flayn seemed very much older than she had when Byleth had first encountered her. She’d grown into her figure more, still lithe yet now more mature, and lost all of her baby fat. “That was very reckless of you, Byleth. What if it attracts the wrong sort of attention?”

Emptying a grave was, after all, a crime. It certainly meant that she ought not to visit her father for a while (a thought that never failed to bring a dull ache to her chest), or desecrate Rhea’s memorial. 

A shame. 

“It wasn’t one of our best moments,” Byleth admits, “— but I don’t think it will attract Agarthan attention. We were careful to avoid street-cameras and it was too foggy out to see us clearly. And besides, it wasn’t as though it was common knowledge that I hid the sword there.”

Even Seteth and Flayn hadn’t known about that. 

“Still, you can never be too careful,” Seteth says gravely. “Have you been able to gain any more information about Agartha?”

It wasn’t that they hadn’t been aware that Agartha still existed, the bastards were damn hard to weed out, but they definitely hadn’t been aware that their enemies had regained enough power to pull off something like breaking into the Holy Tomb. In fact, Seteth had originally thought that they’d gone entirely dormant in the last century or so. 

“Dimitri has filled me in on what he could, such as known bases, activities—they’re into drugs and slavery, nowadays— and any political connections that they’ve discovered thus far, but I think that Claude knows more,” she explains with a sigh. “He’s always been one to keep his cards close to his chest until the right time.”

Flayn places an arm on her shoulder in comfort. “Are you certain that you are ready to be interacting with him? This must be terribly painful for you…”

Byleth leans into the touch, craving it. Way back when, everyone had always been so touchy after the war— even people like Lorenz and Felix never shied away from small touches on the shoulder, or the occasional clasping of hands. Like they were all checking to make sure that their friends were alive. 

Byleth missed it dearly, but at least Flayn had never lost the habit either. “No,” Byleth admits with some difficulty. “I don’t think I am, but I have to.”

“Or you could simply step back and allow me to question him in your stead,” Seteth suggests, finally ceasing his pacing and settling down on the couch with his family. “He is my student, after all. I have plenty of opportunities to do so.”

Byleth shakes her head. “He’ll just talk circles around you. Trust me, I’ve seen him do it before.” During the war, when Claude talked circles around just about anyone before he was ready to reveal his schemes. 

“I believe I can handle that,” Seteth says with a shake of his head. “It’s better that I take a bit longer to get him to talk than for you to do it more quickly at the expense of your mental health.”

“It is a good idea,” Flayn says, green eyes alight with concern. Byleth feels a surge of love for these two, for the only people to have truly stuck by her throughout the centuries. For the family she still had left. “Perhaps I could help as well? We share a class.”

Byleth shakes her head. “Why don’t we just take the weekend to get away from all this? Let’s go fishing.”

Flayn immediately brightens at the thought. “Yes, that sounds wonderful! It’s been so long since I’ve been able to cook fresh fish for dinner!”

“Please don’t poison us,” Byleth says flatly. For all that Flayn has grown, her cooking skills truly have not. 

Flayn glares back at her playfully. “Nonsense! My cooking is just fine, right Father?”

Slightly panicked at being put on the spot in such a manner, Seteth nods very convincingly. “Of course, Flayn.”

Byleth snorts. “He’s only saying that because he knows it can’t kill him. The blessing of immortality and all that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seteth denies quickly, to Flayn’s triumph.

Byleth rolls her eyes. “Mhm.”

“Let’s go to Lake Teutates,” Seteth says, changing the subject. “I’m sure Indech would truly love to have your cooking again.”

Flayn’s smile goes ever brighter and Byleth allows herself to fall into a fit of laughter. What a sadistic brother Seteth can be. 

“It’s what he deserves,” Byleth agrees mirthfully. “He drank all of my coffee behind my back last time we all went fishing.”

“Perhaps you ought to have paid more attention,” Flayn suggests. “It really wasn’t just on him.”

“I had a big one on the line,” Byleth says without remorse. “He can have my portion of dinner too.”

“You’ll have to enjoy going hungry for the night, in that case.”

Seteth gets up, grabs the car keys from the living room table. “Oh, I’m sure she will.”

“ _ Father! _ ”

Byleth barely holds back another peal of laughter. Ah, how she loves her family. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, it took me a while to finish this chapter. Can y’all tell what one of my biggest personal interests is? Honestly, I’m shocked that I’ve never seen anyone else write falconer!Claude. It just fits so well, plus its very well respected in middle-eastern culture. And gyrfalcons are so beautiful! Like, if I had to compare Claude’s white wyvern to any animal, then it has to be that one. 
> 
> Also, it looks like things will finally be picking up plot-wise from this point on! It only took about... sixty pages to get there? XD 
> 
> Anyways, I hope everyone’s staying safe and that this manages to brighten someone’s day!


	6. Chapter 6

(vi)

“So, just to be clear, what exactly are we all doing here?” 

Ingrid shot the poor man a glare that could have frozen even the eternal flames. “Research, _Sylvain_. Research.”

The entirety of the former Blue Lions was gathered in the living room of the apartment shared by Dimitri, Sylvain, Felix and Dedue. Ingrid stood at the whiteboard at the forefront of the room, a marker in hand, wielded with the same intensity that the woman would a lance. 

Sylvain held up his hands in surrender. Felix rolls his eyes from his spot on the couch next to the redhead. “Why are you so sure that this girl was abducted by Agartha, anyways? It could have been literally anyone else.”

“They _are_ known for human trafficking and experimentation,” Ashe points out. He is on the floor, a stolen couch cushion tucked under his chin. “Just look at what happened to Byleth.”

Dimitri’s fist clenches at that thought. How dare they have taken Byleth from her resting place, harmed her and used her? The people of Agartha have committed many sins, but of the proven charges, this is the one that inspires the most rage in him. 

Felix, ever observant, sneers at the change in Dimitri’s expression. “Calm down, pig. Don’t make a scene over your ridiculous crush.”

Dimitri flushes at the insinuation. His foolish, obvious feelings have nothing to do with this. 

Still, Dimitri finds himself feeling just a bit more grounded at Felix’s insult. _Pig_. Of course, even in another life Felix would find another animalistic epithet to call him by. 

But the origins of this one are far more affectionate than the horrific place that _boar_ came from. They’d been around seven, innocent. Before Dimitri’s mental health had taken a turn for the worst. They’d grown up together this time around as well, with Sylvain and Ingrid. 

It had been a rainy, warm summer day, spent playing at the Gautiers’ summer villa. They’d snuck outside, determined to make a mess of themselves regardless of adult opinions. Dimitri recalls slipping into a puddle of mud, ruining his white shorts and covering himself in murky brown. Felix had burst into sweet, boisterous laughter that his adult self had never quite been capable of. 

_What a pig,_ he’d managed between snorts. As vengeance, Dimitri had taken him by the ankle and pulled the other boy down into the mud with him. Felix, never one to let go of a grudge so easily, had in return continued to refer to Dimitri as _pig_ afterwards. 

He never stopped. 

It’s nice. Hearing that word from Felix’s lips is a blessing. The fact that everyone considers it a funny little quirk of their friendship is even more so—he recalls too many times when Dedue had argued with Felix in Dimitri’s defense over _boar_ , when the others had shifted uncomfortably unsure of whether to stay quiet or to defend their prince from his own shield as well. _Pig_ , on the other hand, merely gets a slight roll of the eyes or a chuckle or two. What a lovely nickname!

Mercedes, sweet, merciful Mercedes, chooses not to respond to Felix’s comment, or to let anyone else do so, for that matter. “But Ingrid, didn’t Dorothea say that this girl has been missing for over seven years now? Not to be a pessimist, but that’s an awful long time to be in captivity…”

Ingrid looks down at the floor, sighing despondently. Annette gestures her over to where she and Mercedes are sitting, putting her arm around the other girl in comfort when she sits down. “I know. It’s just… it fits that Agartha is responsible for this. The clues are there! The amount of time between when she was last seen and when she was reported missing, the abrupt closing of the investigation…”

“While those are important pieces of evidence,” Dedue begins carefully, “—are you certain that it cannot be explained by anything else? I do not mean to doubt you, but it is very possible that you are letting your feelings get in the way of your logic.”

Dimitri takes a moment to marvel at the change in their relationship from one life to the next. Without the tragedy of Duscur hanging over all of their heads, Ingrid has no underlying trauma to fuel misplaced anger. Thus, she and Dedue are actually very close friends due to their shared love of food, an unbreakable bond between a chef and his personal taste-tester. It warms Dimitri’s heart more than he could have ever imagined. 

“I know,” Ingrid admits quietly. “But still, the possibility just won’t leave me alone. It’s important that we check out every possible lead, right?”

Dimitri is sympathetic towards her plight. He knows all about wanting to do everything in one’s power for the happiness of an unrequited love. “Right,” he agrees. “We shouldn’t leave any lead unchecked. Even if it does prove to be a dead end, we could get some valuable information.”

He returns Ingrid’s grateful look with a smile of his own. 

“Alright then,” Sylvain says. “You said you found the police reports and the case files on the disappearance, right? Let’s get at ‘em.”

Dedue, the closest to Ingrid’s bag, gets up and passes around the aforementioned papers. It’s always fastest to go over these things as a group and then share their findings. It rather reminds Dimitri of the way that they used to huddle together in their classroom at the Officer’s Academy, planning all their missions under Professor Manuela’s warm gaze. 

Dimitri finally lays his eye upon the file. His lone eye widens.

“Dimitri?” he hears, uncertain. Annette, or maybe Ashe? It doesn’t matter. 

The warm nostalgia has been banished, burned away by the fires of a long-buried fury. 

_Edelgard._

Oh, the last name is different, certainly. But there is no mistaking the name that has been haunting him all this time. He flips the page to the back, tearing a corner in his angry haste. 

There is a picture. The girl looks about sixteen, with brown hair and lavender eyes lacking the passion that he had grown oh so accustomed to. 

Ah, but that face. He knew that face. He knew it oh _so_ well. 

It was funny, truly. Hysterical. Some part of him had always hoped that he’d never hear of the wretch again, yet another part, finally unearthed from where Dimitri had painstakingly buried it, was absolutely _delighted._

Edelgard? Kidnapped by _Agartha_? Oh, this was just too good. 

So what if he didn’t get the chance to rip her over-inflated head from those slim shoulders himself? It didn’t even matter anymore!

For all the violence that Dimitri was well aware existed within himself, he wasn’t quite so depraved as those who slither in the dark. He would have made it quick, if he had had her. Taken her head clean off, like one, two, three. Nowhere near as painful as what she deserved, but he was just weak like that. 

Now, Agartha on the other hand?

They’d do worse things to her than he could have ever imagined. 

Fuck Ingrid and her sense of justice, fuck Dorothea’s misplaced love—fuck his own!

Edelgard von Hresvelg has _finally_ gotten what was coming to her. 

Dimitri gets up, doesn’t bother to look at the others. When someone calls him back, he turns and sneers. “Leave it. There will be no further investigation on this matter. That _woman_ ,” he snarls, for her name is too vile to speak, “—is far, _far_ better off in hell where she belongs.”

He slams the door behind him as he leaves the apartment, rattling the wall itself. The sound echoes in the stunned silence he leaves behind. 

* * *

The room is silent for a moment before Sylvain finally speaks the words that were echoing through everyone’s minds.

“The _hell_ was that…?”

Ashe bites his lip. “Did that… did something in that file set off an episode?”

Felix shakes his head, disturbed. “I made sure he remembered to take his meds this morning.”

Dedue remembers this. Dimitri was always awful at taking care of himself, so his roommates had made a habit of reminding him to take his medications every morning. It would be… awful, if he had forgotten to take them. 

“I will go after him,” Dedue announces, scolding himself for taking so long to do so. Dimitri should never be left alone in that kind of mental state, lucid or not. 

Mercedes shakes her head, standing and putting a delicate arm on Dedue’s shoulder. “No, let me. Focus on figuring out what caused him to become so angry, alright?” 

Dedue nods in acquiescence, though something in him will always feel a bit off at letting someone else handle it. Mercedes rushes out the door. A few years older than the rest of them, she is always taking care of everyone, firm and maternal. 

“I’ll go with her,” volunteers Annette. “You guys keep at it.” She is gone before any of them have a chance to say otherwise—a little whirlwind, their Annette. 

“I don’t understand…” Ingrid trails off. “This girl didn’t even live in the same city as us when she disappeared! How could he possibly know her?”

“Dedue?” Ashe asks. “Do you know her?”

Dedue shakes his head. He had met Dimitri when they were around ten, in a children’s hospital. Dedue had been a visitor, as his sister was in recovery from an unfortunate fire; Dimitri, a patient on the same floor. They’d been in different sections, but Dimitri had been stable enough to wander around the floor with an attendant. 

Truthfully, Dedue doesn’t know how to describe the intense loyalty that had ignited in his chest upon their first meeting. 

But he did know that that smile that the other boy had graced him with upon introduction, good eye-closed and gap-toothed, was brighter than any star, perhaps even brighter than the sun. Something in him had been immensely satisfied at the sight—yet another facet of himself that Dedue hardly understood but was nonetheless accepting of. 

After all, it was hard not to want to be friends with someone so intrinsically kind, best friends, even. Their comradery was an easy one, maintained by emails and phone calls until they could meet in person again, which only blossomed further once they did. 

“I do not recall a girl like this one at the hospital. But I was not allowed into Dimitri’s ward, so he may have encountered her there,” Dedue admits. 

Felix scowls. “Who knows what his mind has twisted her into, if he’d met her in the middle of his first episode.”

Dimitri’s illness was no secret in this room, although he had never been comfortable sharing it with anyone outside of it. But Felix was right—the first episode Dimitri had ever had was by far the worst of them all. He hadn’t been in his right mind. If he had encountered this girl, Edelgard, during this time then it was possible that Dimitri had conjured something entirely different out of this girl than was actually true of her. 

Briefly, Dedue considers going after Mercedes. But Dimitri hasn’t had a full-blown episode in over a year and had never been violent towards anyone but himself, even at his worst. Mercedes would be fine, at least for another few minutes while they brainstormed. 

As much as he hated to admit this, Dedue would be put to better use here than with Dimitri at the moment. 

“We should look into her medical history then,” Sylvain suggests, frowning thoughtfully. “I dunno, I know we haven’t met her before but I’m getting some serious deja vu vibes from this chick.”

Sylvain was right. But then again, such feelings were nothing new to the group either— they’d each been experiencing odd feelings of familiarity since they’d first arrived at Garreg Mach University. Doubly so since the arrival of Byleth. 

“Odd feelings aside, none of us have the necessary skill set to get into the hospital records,” Dedue points out. Martritz Hospital of Fhirdiad was notorious for how seriously they took the security of their patients’ records.

Had Dimitri truly never mentioned this girl before? 

Dedue tries to think back, comb through what he remembered of their early interactions eleven years ago. He can’t—

_“Dedue,” his liege says, fervent. There is a fire in his eyes that isn’t quite right and for a moment, Dedue can barely recognize the man that stands before him. “I swear to you, my old friend. I will make that woman pay for what she has done! I will bring her head back to your people.”_

Dedue’s mouth suddenly feels dry. When did that happen? When did Dimitri make such promises? Dedue couldn’t recall, yet he also couldn’t shake the words from his mind. 

Bring her head back to his people?

Bitterness begins to pool in his gut. It was terribly ironic, how that had turned out— with his prince lying skewered on the ground, unmoving, unsmiling. Even the husk that he’d been in his last years was better than this corpse, for there had still been hope that His Highness could return to his former self, to stop being so overwhelmed by his own kindness as to lose his own mind. 

In the end, His Highness’s last wish had been left to him, he who had always felt unworthy of the kindness that he had been shown for all those years. 

And he had left that wish unfulfilled. 

Dedue looks down at the young girl on the paper. The cruelty is missing from her eyes, yet he cannot separate the child from the woman that she became. Suddenly, he is painfully aware that he is looking at the childish face of his own killer. 

“Dedue? Is everything okay?” asks Ashe, breaking Dedue out of his reverie.

Dedue pauses for a moment. “Yes… I was just thinking.” He gets up, a bit shaky. “I’ll return in a moment.”

He needs to breathe, splash water in his face— whatever that was just now, it wasn’t real. 

Briefly, Dedue wonders if he ought to make an appointment with a psychiatrist too, with all these strange feelings and memories that don’t belong swarming in his head. 

* * *

Mercedes doesn’t quite know what to make of Dimitri’s seemingly unwarranted reaction to that girl’s face, but she does know that she doesn’t blame him for it. 

He’s been struggling with schizoaffective disorder for a long time, after all. 

Though predictable wasn’t a word she would ascribe to Dimitri’s episodes, there were usually indicators. Unusual bouts of irritability, nightmares, glances around the room at random intervals as though he is seeing things that they cannot. 

Mercedes hadn’t noticed any of those things today— by all means, it had started out as a wonderful day for all of them. She knows that she’s a bit scatter-brained, but she takes her friends’ health very seriously. If there had been a sign, she would have seen it. 

That girl’s face just… made an appearance and it all went to hell. A face that, oddly enough, brought echoes of bitterness to Mercedes’ heart, who seemed to be familiar in all the wrong ways (as opposed to the fond, nostalgic, _loving_ feelings everyone else had evoked when she’d first met them as an introductory course TA, that Byleth evoked now). 

“Dimitri, please wait!” Mercedes called out. Dimitri turned back towards her and Annette and sent them a withering glare. 

Mercedes approached him, undeterred. 

Dimitri’s episodes were characterized by harsh, angry, ranting words that he practically begged for forgiveness for later. He often spoke to people that weren’t there, someone named _Glenn_ being the primary recipient. She wonders if that was someone he met at the hospital. Once, he mocked them for forgetting something — but he refused to elaborate on what that something was, even when he was lucid. He was violent, in a sense, but never physical. Not towards anyone else, that is. 

Not towards anyone but himself. 

They’d had to go to the hospital more than once, to get treatment for the layers of skin that he’d mutilated during an episode, clutching at his arms with unholy strength as though to stop himself from ever touching another. 

There is a reason why Dimitri never wears short sleeves, after all. 

Dimitri, she knew, was afraid of no one more himself, even when trapped in the throes of his mental illness. 

Especially then. 

“You won’t convince me to help her,” Dimitri snarls. Annette flinches back slightly, but nonetheless steels herself. “That’s not why we’re here!”

“Oh?” Dimitri asks, one perfect brow raised mockingly with all the airs of a cruel prince. “Were we not just seated at the war-table, discussing that _wretch’s_ rescue?”

“Never mind that! We—“

“Never mind? Truly, you—“

“— are here to help _you_ , Dimitri, not that girl,” Annette finishes, staring up at her friend with pleading eyes. 

Dimitri falters at that. “Oh.” His face falls, the haughty cruelty diminishing from his gaze. Finally, he looks at them. “I don’t need your help.”

“Yes you do,” Mercedes admonishes gently. As quickly as it came, it seemed that this time whatever violence had taken over Dimitri’s mind would be quicker to leave than usual. Making sure that he could see what she was doing, she slowly took his hand, gently prying his fingers from bloodied palms that she made a mental note to fix up with a healing spell later. 

Almost meekly, he lets them guide him to one of the floor’s quiet rooms. 

They sit down on a warm, plush couch. Mercedes gauges the situation and decides not to let go of Dimitri’s hand— he needs something to ground him in reality and it doesn’t look like he’s going to be squeezing back anytime soon. Although, she can’t say she particularly cares if her friend broke her fingers by accident. Those are easily fixed, after all. 

Dimitri looks down at his feet and Annette takes this as a cue to start chattering about her thesis work. She has such a soothing voice and Mercedes knows that Dimitri hates the silence when he’s recovering from an episode. He usually puts on music or listens to his friends talk. If he’s feeling up to it, he’ll sometimes ask for a specific topic. Annette’s thesis is a common request. 

Eventually, Dimitri speaks up. “I… apologize for my behavior. That was uncalled for.” 

Mercedes shakes her head. He still doesn’t seem all there. “It isn’t your fault, Dimitri. Do you want to talk about it?”

Dimitri looks as though he doesn’t believe her at all. He shakes his head.

Annette nods empathetically. “Wanna keep listening to me rant about atomic radiation?” the younger girl suggests instead. 

A nod. 

“Do you even understand half of what I’m saying?”

Dimitri’s lips quirk up slightly, warming Mercedes’ heart. Dimitri’s ineptitude at the sciences has been an ongoing joke between all of them for a while now, ever since he nearly failed the introductory biology course that Mercedes had TA’d. 

He shakes his head again, but seems to be more alert. Annette takes this as a cue to launch right back into her lecture. 

Mercedes allows her mind to wander, idly stroking Dimitri’s hand, which she had moved to her lap. Better that the blood stains her skirt than the couch. It would raise too many questions, and she’d rather wait for him to be in a more alert state before she tries to use magic on him. 

Where had Dimitri encountered this girl, really? Had he ever encountered her?

This reminded her of the way that Dimitri was so familiar with Byleth. Although they all vaguely recognized her, somehow, Dimitri acted like he actually knew the petite woman, just as she acted as though she actually knew him. 

Their comradery seemed as though it was born of years of friendship, not just a scant few weeks, no matter what they said on the subject. 

A thought struck her suddenly. 

What if _Byleth_ knew what the connection was?

* * *

Maybe Byleth should feel bad about just leaving Agartha to the others all over again, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. After what had happened with Claude, she needed to get away and distance herself from the situation. 

What better way to do that than to spend a weekend with her loving family? 

Sighing contentedly, Byleth let her feet dangle off the dock and dipped her toes into the cool water. Fishing rod steady in her hands, she turned her attention back to the conversation at hand. 

“Human fashion has once more regressed since I was last awake,” Macuil sneered. “Why must these pants be so damnedably tight?”

It was utterly adorable. For all that her brother in all but blood had the personality of a wizened old man with a stick so far up his ass it was a wonder that he could still breathe, his many… naps …. had all but ensured that he would stop aging far earlier than his younger brother Seteth. 

As it stood, he looked less like a cranky elder and more like an angsty teenager with an oversized band sweater and ripped skinny jeans, courtesy of Flayn’s beautiful sense of humor. 

Aging gracefully, he called it. Indech liked to put it as _having a physical age that reflects one’s emotional maturity_. 

Not that Indech was any better, really. He looked as though he couldn’t be more than a year older than Byleth, perhaps younger. 

Byleth reached over to Macuil, poking him in his flat but nonetheless softened belly. “You’re only complaining because it makes it hard to hide all that hibernation fat,” she teased. “It’s not the clothing’s fault that you’ve been neglecting your training for the past century.”

Macuil rolled his eyes. “Very mature, Byleth.”

Indech laughed heartily. “You should listen to her, Mac. By’s a combat professor, you know. Tell me, Byleth, how are our dearest brother’s chances of surviving a battle now looking?”

“Low.”

Seteth snorted. “As though you have any room to talk, Indech. How long has it been since you’ve last taken up a bow?”

Indech blinks innocently. “Only about an hour…”

Flayn giggles. “And before that?”

Indech pouts. “Does it really matter?” he asked, unrolling his sleeve and flexing his lean archer’s muscles in a way that reminded Byleth of Raphael. “I’m always ready to make the perfect shot.” 

Now it was Byleth’s turn to pout. “That’s just not fair.” Byleth always has to spend countless hours training whenever she wakes up from a long nap to regain her former musculature. 

“Life isn’t fair,” Macuil deadpanned, just as a fish escaped his hook so close to the docks. His gobsmacked expression put the whole family into a fit of uproarious laughter. 

Shoulders still shaking with mirth, Byleth decided to check the time on her new phone. The gadget fascinated her endlessly and it was more accurate than checking the time by the positions of shadows on a cloudy day. They were planning on starting lunch soon. 

Turning on the device, Byleth was intrigued to see a message from Sylvain pop up. 

**_S:_ ** _Heyy By! I’ve got a quick question_

**B:** _Yes?_

**S:** _Does the name Edelgard mean anythin to u?_

If Byleth had a heart, then it would have skipped a beat. Recovering quickly, Byleth nervously typed out her next message. 

**B:** _Why do you ask?_

_Edelgard._ Now there was a name that Byleth hadn’t thought about in a long time. 

“Is everything alright, Byleth?” Seteth. The distress must have been plain to see on her face. 

**S:** _The name came up while we were looking at something related to twisted_

“Sylvain just asked me about Edelgard.”

“Edelgard?” Flayn flinched. “But… I thought she was dead.”

“The Agarthans’ puppet emperor?” Macuil questioned. “What relevance does she still hold?”

Byleth ignored him for the moment, focusing on Flayn’s comment. “Dead?”

Seteth sighed. “As far as we know. This lifetime’s version of her disappeared several years ago and was presumed dead.”

Indech raised an eyebrow. “Presumed dead? Important people like that don’t just go missing,” he said with a shake of his head. “Sloppy, sloppy little brother.”

“I didn’t know that Agartha was still active,” Seteth protested. “I would have looked into it more if I had!”

“Didn’t know that Agrartha was still active,” Macuil mocked. “Please. As though those cockroaches could have been taken out so easily. There is always more. You’ve grown complacent.”

“It is a peaceful time, Uncle,” Flayn argued. “What do you expect?”

“What do I expect? Cethleann, please—“

Byleth glanced down at her phone again. There were a few more messages from Sylvain. 

**S:** _look, this is really important_

 **S:** _Dima had a bad reaction to that name_

 **S:** _we need to know why_

 **S:** _plz_

A bad reaction? Byleth bit her lip, remembering the Dimitri of her time. He seemed so much better… but Edelgard had always brought out the worst in him. 

**B:** _I will tell you what I can, but don’t ask for more than that_

**S:** _I’ll take what I can get_

Byleth took a deep breath. This was risky, but she owed them an explanation as to what was plaguing their friend. 

**B:** _Edelgard is someone with good intentions, but is willing to stoop to cruel methods to achieve those good intentions. Dimitri’s hatred towards her stems from that and other things that it is not my place to explain to you._

**S:** _Is she twisted?_

**B:** _Not exactly. They’ve worked together in the past_

**S:** _Was she there when you were kidnapped?_

Byleth thought about this. Could Edelgard have been in the base while she was kidnapped, if the other woman was already with the Agarthans? 

**B:** _I don’t know_

**S:** _kay_

A pause. Byleth didn’t know what to say anymore. 

**S:** _thank you. I know that that was hard for you to talk about_

Byleth didn’t know what to say to that either. 


End file.
